The Declaration of Independence contains a carefully-crafted argument establishing the criteria for when revolt is or is not appropriate, and when it is necessary. Jefferson, with the help of Franklin, followed this statement with a list of reasons why it was time to break free from George III:
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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
All governments will stray once in a while, but it is better to put up with it but the chaos of revolution would cause far worse problems. It is when we see a long train of abuses leading in the direction of tyranny that we must rise up and resist. Once a country becomes a full tyranny, it is too late. Revolt while you still can.
Jefferson borrowed the concept and some phrases from John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government:
...Revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty, will be born by the people without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel what they lie under, and see whither they are going; it is not to be wondered, that they should then rouse themselves, and endeavor to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected; and without which, ancient names, and specious forms, are so far from being better, that they are much worse, than the state of nature, or pure anarchy; the inconveniences being all as great and as near, but the remedy farther off and more difficult.
Locke used the metaphor of passengers on a ship to Algiers. At the time, Algiers was a center of piracy and of mass enslavement of Europeans. It was a real risk to travelers that ship captains would sell their passengers into slavery.
… If they see several experiments made of arbitrary power; … and the operators in it supported, as much as may be; and when that cannot be done, yet approved still, and liked the better: if a long train of actions shew the councils all tending that way; how can a man any more hinder himself from being persuaded in his own mind, which way things are going; or from casting about how to save himself, than he could from believing the captain of the ship he was in, was carrying him, and the rest of the company, to Algiers, when he found him always steering that course, though cross winds, leaks in his ship, and want of men and provisions did often force him to turn his course another way for some time, which he steadily returned to again, as soon as the wind, weather, and other circumstances would let him?
If the ship is occasionally pointed towards Algiers instead of its destination, it could just be a momentary change in the winds. But if the ship is steadily headed in that direction, the passengers should revolt while they still can, before they arrive in Algiers and the shackles thrown on them.
