How important is the Declaration of Arbroath..

[macwilkin]

Skauwt's comment about the DoA being worked up to the advantage of the "Lairds" strikes a note...Magna Carta was the "Barons" calling the king up short and, let's face it, those gentlemen "in congreff" on 4 July, 1776 weren't exactly the rank and file...they were basically landed gentlemen who were in the top ten percent of their population.

Probably all of these situations were examples of "trickle down"...when the aristocrats shook thing up, the peons eventually got some benefit out of it.

Best

AA

There's certainly some truth in that, not to mention that in the case of our founding fathers, many of them were slaveowners whilst calling for liberty and freedom. Ironically, it was the British who freed the slaves during the Revolution, and one regiment, the "Royal Ethiopians", was raised from escaped slaves in Virginia -- many of them relocated to Canada, Bermuda or the UK after the war was over.

Of course, no historic figure is perfect. As the movie "1776" rightly points out, the founders were not demigods.

T.