《1776報告》
二、獨立宣言的意義 The Meaning of the Declaration
美利堅合眾國在大多數方面同其他國家一樣，由居住在領土上的人民組成，人民則由人所制定的政府律法來管理。美家也有國界、資源、企業、城市、鄉鎮、農場、工廠、家庭、學校和禮拜場所。儘管美國是一個相對年輕的國家，她的人民有共同的奮鬥和成就的歷史，從廣袤的荒原上開疆拓土，到贏得國家獨立，組建新的政府。美國經歷了戰爭、工業化、移民潮、科技進步和政治變革。
The United States of America is in most respects a nation like any other. It embraces a people, who inhabit a territory, governed by laws administered by human beings. Like other countries, our country has borders, resources, industries, cities and towns, farms and factories, homes, schools, and houses of worship. And, although a relatively young country, its people have shared a history of common struggle and achievement, from carving communities out of a vast, untamed wilderness, to winning independence and forming a new government, through wars, industrialization, waves of immigration, technological progress, and political change.
插圖：馬丁·路德·金
Image：Martin Luther King Jr.
然而，在其他方面，美國是不尋常的。美國是一個共和國，政府是由人民的意志來支配，並非某個個體或少數的精英的意志。共和體制在歷史上是一個古老卻不尋常的政府形式，部分因為這個體制的脆弱性，易於消殘。當代美國人容易忘記共和體制在歷史上是罕見的，部分原因是共和體制在我們這個時代的成功，而共和體制的成功在很大程度上正是源於美國範例的成功。
In other respects, however, the United States is unusual. It is a republic; that is to say, its government was designed to be directed by the will of the people rather than the wishes of a single individual or a narrow class of elites. Republicanism is an ancient form of government but one uncommon throughout history, in part because of its fragility, which has tended to make republics short-lived. Contemporary Americans tend to forget how historically rare republicanism has been, in part because of the success of republicanism in our time, which is derived in no small part from the very example and success of America.
決定性美國是獨特的有兩個方面。首先，她有明確的生日，1776年7月4 日。其次，從誕生之初她便宣告，不僅僅是新政府要遵守這些原則，這些原則也是普遍真理，正如林肯所述，「適用於任何世代的任何人」。
In two decisive respects, the United States of America is unique. First, it has a definite birthday: July 4th, 1776. Second, it declares from the moment of its founding not merely the principles on which its new government will be based; it asserts those principles to be true and universal: 「applicable to all men and all times,」 as Lincoln said.
其他的國家或許也有誕生日。例如，最終演變為法蘭西共和國的是在1789年，巴黎人攻佔了巴士底獄，導致法國君主制及其貴族政權的垮臺。又如，中華人民共和國於1949年誕生 ，這是毛澤東帶領中國共產黨在國共內戰時期打敗國民黨政權後。然而，法國和中國作為居住在特定領土上的民族和文化，若追溯到幾個世紀，甚至幾千年前，都經歷了許多的政權變遷。
Other nations may have birthdays. For instance, what would eventually evolve into the French Republic was born in 1789 when Parisians stormed a hated prison and launched the downfall of the French monarchy and its aristocratic regime. The Peoples Republic of China was born in 1949 when Mao Tse Tung’s Chinese Communist Party defeated the Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War. But France and China as nations—as peoples and cultures inhabiting specific territories—stretch back centuries and even millennia, over the course of many governments.
1776年7月4日以前，沒有美國，連美國人也沒有，有的是二百五十萬民眾居住在十三個英屬殖民地。這些殖民地附庸於遙遠的國王。那些民眾宣布他們成為一國一民，之後通過贏得他們所主張的獨立權利而成為人民。
There was no United States of America before July 4th, 1776. There was not yet, formally speaking, an American people. There were, instead, living in the thirteen British colonies in North America some two-and-a-half million subjects of a distant king. Those subjects became a people by declaring themselves such and then by winning the independence they had asserted as their right.
他們的宣告是建立在原則之上，不是血脈或是親族，也不是我們今天稱呼的「種族」。然而，我們必須正確理解這一事實。在約翰·傑伊 (美國國父之一)的《聯邦黨人文集》第二篇所述：「上帝樂於把這個連成一片的國家賜予一個團結的人民——這個人民是同一祖先的後裔，語言相同，宗教信仰相同，隸屬於相同的政府原則，風俗習慣非常相似；他們用自己共同的計劃、軍隊和努力，在一次長期的流血戰爭中並肩作戰，光榮地建立了全體的自由和獨立。」
They made that assertion on the basis of principle, not blood or kinship or what we today might call 「ethnicity.」 Yet this fact must be properly understood. As John Jay explained in Federalist 2, Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout along and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.
然而，傑伊（和其他國父）也非常了解，新組成的美國人民並不是像上述斷言的那樣在血統、語言或宗教方面均為相似。他們不全是英國人，不全是新教徒，也不全是基督徒。如果人民要繼續組成一個國家，就必須保持聯結。將新的人民聯結在一起，就必須找到和堅持一些其他的基礎。這基礎就是堅持普遍和永恆的原則：正義和政治的合法性。
Yet, as Jay (and all the founders) well knew, the newly formed American people were not quite as homogenous—in ancestry, language, or religion—as this statement would seem to assert. They were neither wholly English nor wholly Protestant nor wholly Christian. Some other basis would have to be found and asserted to bind the new people together and to which they would remain attached if they were to remain a people. That basis was the assertion of universal and eternal principles of justice and political legitimacy.
插圖：獨立宣言 （約翰·特朗布爾畫作）
Image：Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull
致敬傑弗遜 （獨立序言起草人）：在國家爭取獨立的巨大壓力下，一個鎮靜、有前瞻性、有能力的人，開啟了一個獨特的革命性文件，一個抽象的真理，適用於所有的人和所有的時代。因而特此紀念，在現今和未來，《獨立宣言》都會是有徵兆再次出現的暴政和壓迫的斥責和絆腳石。—— 亞伯拉罕·林肯
All honor to Jefferson-to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that today, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression. —— Abraham Lincoln
這普遍和永恆的原則也同樣有限定條件。約翰·傑伊列舉了聯合美國人民的六點因素，其中原則是最重要、最明確的一點，然而也只是一點而已，是不充足的。美國國父明白，為了使共和體制持續發揮作用，共和體制下的的民眾必須在禮節、習俗、語言和對共同利益的盡忠上有很大程度的共同性。
But this too must be qualified. Note that Jay lists six factors binding the American people together, of which principle is only one—the most important or decisive one, but still only one, and insufficient by itself. The American founders understood that, for republicanism to function and endure, a republican people must share a large measure of commonality in manners, customs, language, and dedication to the common good.
所有的國家、所有的政府都對其合法性提出某種聲明——為什麼它們的存在和具體形式是合理的。有些人將所有這些合法性的主張視為錯謬，進而愚弄被統治者，使其相信統治者的行為是正當的，而事實上，這些行為只是為了滿足少數人的私利而已。
All states, all governments, make some claim to legitimacy—that is, an argument for why their existence and specific form are justified. Some dismiss all such claims to legitimacy as false, advanced to fool the ruled into believing that their rulers』 actions are justified when in fact those actions only serve the private interests of a few.
沒有一個實際的政府是這樣理解自己的，更沒有一個政府在公開場合會提出這樣值得懷疑的主張。相反，所有實際的政府，都會把自己理解為正義的，也公開宣稱為什麼是正義的。在美國建國時期，最普遍的主張是一種形式的君權神授，也就是說，相信上帝任命一些人或一些家族來統治，也把其餘的人託付給他們來統治。
But no actual government understands itself this way, much less makes such a cynical claim in public. All actual governments, rather, understand themselves as just and assert a public claim as to why. At the time of the American founding, the most widespread claim was a form of the divine right of kings, that is to say, the assertion that God appoints some men, or some families, to rule and consigns the rest to be ruled.
美國的建國者拒絕了這種說法。正如《獨立宣言》中對喬治國王提出的十八項指控所表明的那樣，我們的國父認為當時的英國政府是壓迫性的、不公正的。他們不希望用另一個暴君的政府來取代一個暴君的專制政府。
The American founders rejected that claim. As the eighteen charges leveled against King George in the Declaration of Independence make clear, our founders considered the British government of the time to be oppressive and unjust. They had no wish to replace the arbitrary government of one tyrant with that of another.
更為根本的是，在擺脫了與英國的政治聯繫之後，美國的建國者需要為他們的新政府闡述一份新的具有政治合法性的原則。正如《獨立宣言》所言，"尊重人類的公意 "要求他們解釋並證明自己的行為是正當的。
More fundamentally, having cast off their political connection to England, our founders needed to state a new principle of political legitimacy for their new government. As the Declaration of Independence puts it, a 「decent respect to the opinions of mankind」 required them to explain themselves and justify their actions.
他們不僅僅是想宣稱，他們不喜歡英國的統治，所以要用他們更喜歡的東西來取代。他們希望為自己的行動和將誕生的政府提出一個既真實又合乎道德的道理：合乎道德是因為它忠實於事物的真相。
They did not merely wish to assert that they disliked British rule and so were replacing it with something they liked better. They wished to state a justification for their actions, and for the government to which it would give birth, that is both true and moral: moral because it is faithful to the truth about things.
這種道理只能在自然界，特別是人類本性的規律中找到。這些規律是人的心靈可以接觸到的，但不受人的意志支配。無論是被理解為上帝創造的，或簡單理解為永恆的這些規律，都不是人類創造和可以改變的。因此，《獨立宣言》同時指向理性和啟示，講到 "自然的法則和掌管自然之上帝的法則"。這是此份宣言核心真理的基礎，也是這個新國家合法性的基礎。
Such a justification could only be found in the precepts of nature—specifically human nature—accessible to the human mind but not subject to the human will. Those precepts—whether understood as created by God or simply as eternal—are a given that man did not bring into being and cannot change. Hence the Declaration speaks of both 「the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God」—it appeals to both reason and revelation—as the foundation of the underlying truth of the document’s claims, and for the legitimacy of this new nation.
《獨立宣言》的核心主張和美國國父的政治思想基礎是"造物主創造了平等的個人"。從平等原則出發，自然而然地得出了如下結論：若所有人都是平等的，那麼未經他人同意，任何人都不得以權利統治他人。
The core assertion of the Declaration, and the basis of the founders』 political thought, is that 「all men are created equal.」 From the principle of equality, the requirement for consent naturally follows: if all men are equal, then none may by right rule another without his consent.
我們還需要正確理解「造物主創造了平等的個人」這句宣言。這並不是說，所有人在智慧、勇氣、任何其他道德和才能方面是平等的，這些是由上帝和自然不均勻地分配在人類中。人類是平等的 ，這句話的意思是，人類並沒有被與生俱來地劃分成不同的社會階級，有天然的統治者和被統治者。
The assertion that 「all men are created equal」 must also be properly understood. It does not mean that all human beings are equal in wisdom, courage, or any of the other virtues and talents that God and nature distribute unevenly among the human race. It means rather that human beings are equal in the sense that they are not by nature divided into castes, with natural rulers and ruled.
託馬斯·傑斐遜 (獨立宣言主要起草者)喜歡引用共和黨政治思想家阿爾格農·西德尼的一句話: "在上帝的恩典下，人類並不是生來就像馬順服在馬鞍之下，也不是少數生來就可以合法駕馭那些馬的人。" 優越的才能，甚至是優越的統治能力，並不是神聖的、天賜的統治頭銜或授權。喬治·華盛頓（美國第一任總統），無疑是有史以來最幹練的政治家之一，他從未提出過這種荒唐的主張，事實上，他強烈地反對別人對他的這種斷言。
Thomas Jefferson liked to paraphrase the republican political thinker Algernon Sidney: 「the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.」 Superiority of talent—even a superior ability to rule—is not a divine or natural title or warrant to rule. George Washington, surely one of the ablest statesmen who ever lived, never made such an outlandish claim and, indeed, vehemently rejected such assertions made by others about him.
正如亞伯拉罕·林肯後來所解釋的那樣，美國國父並不迫切需要在一份 "單純的革命文件 "中插入這一句 "適用於所有人和所有時代的抽象真理"。他們本可以簡單地告訴英國國王他們要分離，然後就不再說什麼了。但他們擴大了《獨立宣言》的範圍，使它的原則能夠成為"對有徵兆再次出現的暴政和壓迫的斥責和絆腳石"。"造物主創造了平等的個人"這一終極真理旨在使任何形式上或法律上的不平等都不可能恢復，無論是絕對君主制和世襲貴族制等舊的形式，還是我們在現今看到但在當時尚未想到的形式。
As Abraham Lincoln would later explain, there was no urgent need for the founders to insert into a 「merely revolutionary document」 this 「abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times.」 They could simply have told the British king they were separating and left it at that. But they enlarged the scope of their Declaration so that its principles would serve as 「a rebuke and a stumbling block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.」 The finality of the truth that 「all men are created equal」 was intended to make impossible any return to formal or legal inequality, whether to older forms such as absolute monarchy and hereditary aristocracy, or to as-yet-unimagined forms we have seen in more recent times.
平等不僅需要統治者的同意，而且需要承認基本人權，包括但不僅限於生命、自由和追求幸福的權利，以及所有人尊重他人權利的基本責任或義務。這些都是天然的權利，並非由人類或政府所創造；相反，人類創造政府是為了保障這些自然權利。事實上，政府的目的就是為了保障這些權利，無論政府是否承認這些權利，這些權利都是獨立於政府而存在的。一個糟糕的政府可能會否認或忽視這些自然權利，甚至阻止其行使在現實中，卻永遠不能抹殺或消除這些權利。
Natural equality requires not only the consent of the governed but also the recognition of fundamental human rights—including but not limited to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—as well as the fundamental duty or obligation of all to respect the rights of others. These rights are found in nature and are not created by man or government; rather, men create governments to secure natural rights. Indeed, the very purpose of government is to secure these rights, which exist independently of government, whether government recognizes them or not. A bad government may deny or ignore natural rights and even prevent their exercise in the real world. But it can never negate or eliminate them.
《獨立宣言》的原則是普遍和永恆的。然而，這些原則是由特定的人民在特定的情況下，為了特定的目的而提出的。文件中闡述的一般原則解釋了美國的建國者脫離英國的具體行動，並為其提供了理由，同時也解釋了他們建立新政府的原則。這些原則適用於所有人，但建國者的行動只是為了確保美國人的權利，而不是全人類的權利。世界仍然是，而且將永遠是在一種分裂的氛圍下，並不是在所有情況下，其人民的權利都被尊重，儘管他們應該被尊重。
The principles of the Declaration are universal and eternal. Yet they were asserted by a specific people, for a specific purpose, in a specific circumstance. The general principles stated in the document explain and justify the founders』 particular actions in breaking off from Great Britain, and also explain the principles upon which they would build their new government. These principles apply to all men, but the founders acted to secure only Americans』 rights, not those of all mankind. The world is still—and will always be—divided intonations, not all of which respect the rights of their people, though they should.
最後，我們要面對的困難是，《獨立宣言》中闡明的永恆原則和其成為實際政府的基礎，是在相對短的歷史時間以前。然而，如果這些原則既是永恆的，又是人類心靈所能理解的，那麼為什麼在1776年之前沒有發現這些原則並採取行動呢？
We confront, finally, the difficulty that the eternal principles elucidated in the Declaration were stated, and became the basis for an actual government, only a relatively short time ago. Yet if these principles are both eternal and accessible to the human mind, why were they not discovered and acted upon long before 1776?
當我們美利堅合眾國的設計師寫下美國憲法和《獨立宣言》的豪言壯語時，他們是在籤署一份每個美國人都要繼承的期票。這份期票是一個承諾，承諾所有的人，是的，黑人和白人，將擁有保證生命、自由和追求幸福的不可剝奪的權利。- 馬丁·路德·金
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
從某種意義上說，美國國父的準則是先前的思想家所知道的，但這些思想家用完全不同的措辭來闡述這些準則，以適應他們時代不同的政治和思想環境。例如，古代哲學家似乎教導說，智慧是一種真正的統治頭銜，從一種決定性的方面來看，所有的人並非生而平等。然而，他們也教導說，確實的、活生生的人根本不可能獲得真正的智慧。即使智慧是一種合法的統治頭銜，如果任何活著的人都無法獲得完美的智慧，那麼除非得到他人的同意，否則任何人都無權成為他人的統治者。
In a sense, the precepts of the American founders were known to prior thinkers, but those thinkers stated them in entirely different terms to fit the different political and intellectual circumstances of their times. For instance, ancient philosophers appear to teach that wisdom is a genuine title to rule and that in a decisive respect all men are not created equal. Yet they also teach that it is all but impossible for any actual, living man to attain genuine wisdom. Even if wisdom is a legitimate title to rule, if perfect wisdom is unattainable by any living man, then no man is by right the ruler of any other except by their consent.
更為根本的是，到美國建國之時，西方的政治生活已經發生了兩個重大變化。第一個是隨著基督教的出現和廣泛的適用，民法與宗教法的分離。第二個重大變化是基督教內部出現了多個教派，破壞了基督教的統一，反過來又大大破壞了政治上的統一。宗教分歧成為政治衝突和戰爭的根源。正如在附錄二中進一步討論的那樣，正是為了應對這些根本性的新情況，美國國父制定了宗教自由的原則。
More fundamentally, by the time of the American founding, political life in the West had undergone two momentous changes. The first was the sundering of civil from religious law with the advent and widespread adoption of Christianity. The second momentous change was the emergence of multiple denominations within Christianity that undid Christian unity and in turn greatly undermined political unity. Religious differences became sources of political conflict and war. As discussed further in Appendix II, it was in response to these fundamentally new circumstances that the American founders developed the principle of religious liberty.
雖然美國國父所闡述的原則是正確和永恆的，但還需知道，這些原則是人為解決現實問題而制定的。要想了解美國建國者對這些問題的解決辦法，我們必須從美國憲法中尋找。
While the founders』 principles are both true and eternal, they cannot be understood without also understanding that they were formulated by practical men to solve real-world problems. For the founders』 solution to these problems we must turn to the Constitution.