A Day for the Declaration

What strikes us as we mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is how relevant it is to issues that we, and other newspapers, wrestle with every day. In the thousands of editorial meetings we’ve hosted over the years, we’ve almost always had a copy of the Declaration — and the Constitution — on the table. It’s hard to recall a day when there wasn’t an issue in the news that at least touched on the Declaration.Take, say, immigration. Where were the Founders on this head? It turns out that immigration and naturalization were among the 27 complaints lodged in the Declaration parchment against George III. Estimates reckon that in 1776, which is when the Declaration was signed, there were something like 2.5 million persons in America, and the Americans at the time wanted many more. It made George III nervous.The king “has,” the Declaration says in listing this issue among the complaints against the British tyrant, “endeavoured to prevent the population of these States.” They reckoned it was for that purpose that George III was given to “obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners” and was “refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”What stands out for us is how the Declaration emerges as a reminder that robust immigration was one of the core issues that animated our revolt against Britain from the beginning. Almost every time we’ve sat down to editorialize on this head, we’ve had the Declaration on the table. The immigration issues have changed, we get it, but the Declaration has not and, unlike the Constitution, can’t be amended. Another issue that vibrates across 250 years is judges. What the Declaration complained of was the fact that George III “has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.” When one thinks about why America quit Britain, judges’ pay isn’t the first grievance that jumps out. We like the issue, though, because it marks how important properly paid judges are to an independent judiciary.The issue is important enough that a decade after the Declaration, the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia flatly forbade Congress from lowering the pay of a United States judge. It also established that judges would enjoy their offices as long as the judges were on good behavior, meaning, in effect, that they hold their offices for life. That long tenure and the prohibition on lowering judges’ pay puts the government on the spot even 250 years later.For if lowering the pay of judges, an issue flagged in the Declaration and codified in the Constitution, is prohibited — then why is it constitutionally kosher for the Congress to be paying our judges in debased dollars? If the question seems far-fetched, we say, wait a while. It’s been only 250 years since the Declaration was inked. There’s a long time yet to redeem the complaints that caused us to quit Britain. So happy Fourth of July from all of us at the Sun.

A Day for the Declaration

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