9781422287453

33 The Words of Thomas Jefferson

be found only upon the general good. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.” In the years since then, other countries have written similar documents to declare their independence. In 1848, the people of Hungary issued their own Declaration of Independence. At the time, the Hungarians were ruled by Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I. However, the armies of Franz Joseph soon crushed the Hungarian rebellion. Hungary would not win its freedom from Austria until after World War I, when the armies of America and the democracies of Europe defeated Austria-Hungary on the battlefield, and the empire was broken into independent states. For centuries, the people of Japan had been ruled by emperors and dictators. Following World War II, when the Japanese were defeated by the armies of America

and the other free nations, the people of Japan wanted to write their own constitu- tion—a set of laws to gov- ern themselves. In 1946, the authors of Japan’s constitution drew their inspiration from the words of Thomas Jefferson. Indeed, the Japanese consti-

Make Connections Philadelphia printer John Dunlap made copies of the declaration on the night of July 4, 1776. At least 25 of those copies are known to exist today. One of them was found in a cheap glass frame at a flea mar- ket and later sold at auction for $8.4 million.