LETTER: On the U.S. Constitution

Last week, I wrote a letter outlining Sir William Blackstone’s influence on America’s Founders with regard to the Declaration of Independence. Here I will present his impact on the Constitution of the United States.

A. No taxation without representation

The Declaration was a document listing grievances against a government which the signers believed had failed to operate in accordance with the laws of nature. Chief among the grievances listed in the Declaration was the fact King George violated the “laws of nature and of nature’s God” by “imposing taxes on us without our consent.” Colonies were taxed but denied representation in Parliament. In contrast, the Constitution documents how the Founding Fathers believed that an ideal government, in submission to the law of nature, should operate. Accordingly, the Constitution sought to remedy the taxation problem by requiring in Article I, Section 7, that bills for revenue originate in the House of Representatives, the body of government closest to the American people.

B. The unalienable right to property

An understanding of Blackstone’s beliefs on property rights is impossible apart from an understanding of his beliefs on happiness, for he believed that the latter depended on the former. Blackstone turned to the revealed law of God for “the only true and solid foundation of man’s dominion over external things.” He referred to Genesis chapter one wherein the Creator gave man “dominion over all the earth.” Blackstone stated a right to property “tends to man’s real happiness, and therefore justly concluding that . . . it is a part of the law of nature.” Likewise, according to Blackstone, the converse is true—denial of property rights is “destructive of man’s real happiness, and therefore the law of nature forbids it.” When the Framers engrafted the right to property into the Constitution—with all of its complexities and exceptions—the theories of Blackstone were, without a doubt, of paramount influence.

C. The unalienable right of self-defense

Blackstone’s view of the right to bear arms is stated in the following quote: “The fifth and last auxiliary right of the subject, that I shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their defense . . . is indeed, a public allowance under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation.”

The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution provides that a “well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” The American belief in the right to bear arms has its roots in “civil jurists of the period who had specifically dealt with the question of self-defense as a natural right.” To them, a failure to defend oneself against unlawful aggression amounted to suicide by inaction.

As one can see, our nation’s Biblical foundations run deep. This is just a fraction of the evidence that is available to those willing to seek truth and knowledge. But due to apathy, the distractions of life, or willful rejection, America is allowing its heritage and history to perish, and in the process, her people perish.

Tom Reilly

Joseph Plains