This year, as America celebrates the anniversary of the independence of our nation, we would all benefit from giving serious consideration to the values set forth by the Founders of this country. The men who met to debate the future of these 13 British colonies believed that the success of any new government depended on the character and virtue of its citizens. As members of the American Inns of Court, we should all strive to uphold the professionalism, ethics and civility that our government still needs at this point in our history. It all started in 1776.
Two hundred fifty years ago in Philadelphia, 56 members of the Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence, mutually pledging to one another their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. Although the entire document of more than 1,300 words remains remarkable for its clarity, depth, and persuasiveness, its most famous passage is undoubtedly the second sentence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Many people have focused on the word happiness in this sentence, interpreting it as a promise of feeling good—or as a guarantee that individuals are entitled to the fulfillment of their desires. This is a serious misunderstanding. In her 2015 law review article in the Washington University Jurisprudence Review, “The Origins of the Pursuit of Happiness,” Carli Conklin concluded that the “pursuit of happiness” evoked an Enlightenment belief that pursuing a life of virtue would yield the end result of happiness. Pleasure and happiness are not the same, and happiness does not depend on getting everything we want.
The foundations of Western philosophy, ethics, science, and politics were established by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Most educated men and women of the 18th century—and virtually all of the delegates to the Continental Congress—had received a classical education that included careful study of these Greek philosophers. In Nicomachean Ethics (350 BC), Aristotle proclaimed that “He is happy who lives in accordance with complete Virtuethroughout a complete life.” Our overall level of sustained happiness depends on our actions and ethical behavior throughout our lifetime.
As Thomas Jefferson understood it, the right to the pursuit of happiness meant the right to seek personal fulfillment through virtuous living. This connection between virtue and happiness was widely accepted in the 18th century. In an 1819 letter to his former private secretary, William Short, Jefferson noted that he considered the doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in the moral philosophy that “Greece and Rome have left us,” including his oft-quoted comment that “Happiness is the aim of life, [and] Virtue the foundation of happiness.”In his Poor Richard's Almanack (1746), Benjamin Franklin similarly observed that “virtue and happiness are mother and daughter.” In his first inaugural address, given on April 30, 1789, George Washington explained to the members of Congress that “there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.”
Many scholars have discussed Jefferson’s decision to substitute “pursuit of happiness” for “property” as one of our unalienable rights in the Declaration. In the 18th century, the essential rights were considered by most writers to be life, liberty, and property.John Adams, in A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787), wrote that “Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty,” arguing that without respect for property—embodied in commandments such as “Thou shalt not steal”—no society could be civilized or free.
By modern standards, the Colonial leaders were extraordinarily well-read, and Jefferson was certainly very familiar with the English philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries, including John Locke, whose writings were instrumental in shaping the revolutionary ideas of that time. Locke posited that people consented to be governed as part of a “social contract” from which they gained protection for their “natural rights.”It is generally accepted that Jefferson adopted many of Locke’s ideas and that his incorporation of “pursuit of happiness” as one of our basic rights came from Section 51 of Book II, Chapter XXI of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), where Locke opined:
Sect. 51. The necessity of pursuing true happiness is the foundation of liberty.
[T]he highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness…the necessary foundation of our liberty.
The…unalterable pursuit of happiness in general is our greatest good….
The “pursuit of happiness,” then, is neither simple nor rooted in hedonism. It is the foundation of liberty because its goal is to help us better ourselves and our society. In this sense, the pursuit of happiness is essential to preserving freedom itself.
Jefferson’s library also included William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769), and Blackstone’s ideas most likely were considered by Jefferson in the drafting of the Declaration. Blackstone believed that the pursuit of happiness was a key principle of jurisprudence, helping to shape and improve the common law. In Blackstone’s view, laws were necessary to help people find happiness by supporting virtue and securing individual rights. He argued that the ultimate purpose of law is to promote the general welfare and happiness of society. The common law should reflect the law of nature—perceived through reason and revealed by God—teaching people to pursue happiness in a way that is compatible with moral excellence, character, and ethical behavior towards others.
When Jefferson wrote his draft of the Declaration, he focused on the pursuit of happiness, not its achievement. He believed that people have a God-given right to live by the laws of nature, a right that is not possible under tyranny. Both Blackstone and Jefferson understood that the prevailing 18th-century concept of happiness wasn’t merely momentary contentment but rather a condition of intellectual growth that resulted from virtuous living. To the members of the Continental Congress, the pursuit of happiness signified a lifelong devotion to moral improvement: cultivating habits that foster self -governance, emotional intelligence, discipline, and continued personal growth. They generally believed that happiness was something to be pursued rather than obtained—an ongoing challenge rather than a final goal.
In his famous and influential pamphlet Common Sense, Thomas Paine argued that the strength of any government rests on the happiness of the governed. “Societypromotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections” and encouraging intercourse among the governed. The principal purpose of government, Paine argued, should not be the individual happiness of any individual citizens but, rather, the collective happiness of the entire citizenry. All people are not guaranteed a version of happiness that is devoted to pure pleasure but those who are governed do possess an undeniable right to pursue it.
Accepting the reasoning of ancient Greek philosophers, many 18th-century Colonial leaders believed that a healthy republic depended on its citizens’ willingness to confront their own imperfections and strive to become more virtuous. Our Founding Fathers often wrote about their struggles for self-improvement and their efforts to discipline their personal shortcomings. Many kept detailed schedules for reading, writing, and exercise, carefully recording their successes and failures as they attempted to live up to ancient ideals.
In his early 20s, while living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin examined various lists of moral virtues he “met with” in his readings and created his own list of 13 moral virtues that occurred to him as necessary or desirable. In the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1791), he admitted: “But, on the whol, tho’ I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it.” In essence, Franklin was arguing that the actions we engage in as part of our attempt to pursue happiness make us better citizens and happier people.
There is certainly a paradox between slavery and freedom among many of those who founded our nation.In his famous 1775 “liberty or death” speech at the Second Virginia Convention, Patrick Henry proclaimed that he considered our fight with England as being nothing less than “a question of freedom or slavery.” Yet, in a 1773 letter that he wrote to John Alsop, Patrick Henry noted that it is “amazing” that in a country where men are so “fond of liberty,” many have adopted a practice so “repugnant to humanity.” Henry admitted that he was drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without slaves. “I will not—I cannot—justify it, however culpable my conduct.” Like Henry, Thomas Jefferson and other Virginia slaveholders recognized that their attachment to property and wealth prevented them from freeing those they enslaved, even as they called for eventual emancipation.
It should not surprise us that members of the Continental Congress fell short of moral perfection, particularly on the issue of slavery. The pursuit of happiness, striving for moral improvement, is not easy. While many of our Founders understood their failures and aspired to improvement, it should not have been so difficult to recognize the horror of enslaving people. Franklin owned slaves but after the ratification of the Constitution he became an outspoken opponent of slavery, and his last public act was to send to Congress a petition asking for the abolition of slavery and an end to the slave trade. The petition, signed on February 3, 1790, asked the first Congress, then meeting in New York City, to “devise means for removing the Inconsistency from the Character of the American People,” and to “promote mercy and justice toward this distressed Race.” Franklin referred to the great moral errors of his life as “errata,” borrowing language from his printing career. An epitaph that he created as a young man (that appears not on his grave marker, but on a nearby memorial plaque near 5th and Arch Streets in Philadelphia), reads: “The Body of B. Franklin, Printer,…Lies here. Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be lost, For it will as he believ’d, appear once more In a new & more elegant Edition Corrected and improved By the Author.”
While in France during the Constitutional Convention, Jefferson wrote a letter to his oldest daughter, Martha (Patsy), on May 21, 1787, in which he provided the following fatherly advice to his daughters:
“The object most interesting to me for the residue of my life, will be to see you both developing daily those principles of virtue and goodness which will make you valuable to others and happy in yourselves, and acquiring those talents and that degree of science which will guard you at all times against ennui, the most dangerous poison of life. Be good and be industrious, and you will be what I shall most love in this world.”
In the view of our Founders, the continued health of our republic depends on the character of our citizens. The pursuit of happiness is indeed a right—but it is also a discipline. It requires self-restraint, self-mastery, and sustained moral effort. Only through those qualities can Americans achieve the wisdom and harmony necessary for true freedom.
As the country marks the 250th anniversary of American independence, members of the American Inns of Court would do well to reconsider what the “pursuit of happiness” is commonly assumed to mean today, what the Founders intended, and how to pursue a deeper understanding of Jefferson’s phrase. This will serve well as a guide—not only for those of us lucky enough to be part of an Inn of Court, but also for our nation itself.
Just as the Founders saw the pursuit of happiness as a lifelong discipline of moral improvement, the Inns of Court ask the same of the legal professionals. The vision of the American Inns of Court is to promote a legal profession and judiciary that is dedicated to professionalism, ethics, civility and excellence. We are not here to help lawyers win more cases or make more money. Our professional creed is to treat the practice of law as a learned profession, making the legal system more accessible, responsive, and effective.
We challenge ourselves to honor the spirit and intent of the applicable codes of professional conduct and uphold the standards of our profession with dignity, civility and courtesy. Valuing integrity above all, we will avoid misuse of the law, its procedures and its processes, while contributing our time and resources to public service and helping others. In essence, we will pursue happiness by working to develop those principles of virtue and goodness that will make us valuable to society.
As members of the American Inns of Court, we work to promote the sustained moral and professional development that the members of the Continental Congress would have recognized as the kind of civic virtue that they meant by the “pursuit of happiness.”
Dale G. Larrimore, Esquire is a mediator and neutral arbitrator with ADR Options in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Villanova Law J. Willard O’Brien American Inn of Court and serves on the Editorial Board for The Bencher.