The Pursuit of Happiness and the Ends of Government

In the mid-1870s, Missouri called its third state constitutional convention in under sixty years.¹ During the ensuing debates, a delegate by the name of Mr. Todd questioned a proposal to remove “the pursuit of happiness” from the constitutional text.² The pursuit of happiness had been included as an unalienable right in Article I of the 1865 Constitution: “That we hold it to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor, and the pursuit of happiness”:³ In voicing his concerns, Delegate Todd stated:

I always supposed that what made the occasion for a state, what made the occasion for a government, was the people, and that the government was established for the purpose of protecting the people in their liberties, their lives, and their pursuit of happiness; and we have adopted a new phrase in the proposed Constitution to the exclusion of that “pursuit of happiness” by substituting the phrase “the gains of their toil.” But manifestly if we leave that out, of what use is the government?⁴

It is a startling proposition. Why would Delegate Todd suppose that the protection of the unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness was so instrumental to the purposes or ends of government that to leave it out of the constitutional text would be to make the government of no use at all? To answer that question, we need to revisit how happiness was understood in the context of the founding era.

When we think of the pursuit of happiness, we might first think of these lines from the Declaration of Independence (1776): “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.^5”

But “the pursuit of happiness” is an idea that long preceded the Declaration. The primary drafters of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams, debated and wrote about law and governance within an intellectual framework that stretched back over two millennia. ⁶ They found easy, if incomplete, correlations between key tenets of classical Greek and Roman philosophy; the providential nature and moral teachings of Christian theology; the inductive reasoning of Newtonian science; the historical development of English law and legal theory; and the moral philosophy of the Enlightenment era. They believed that just as the natural world was governed by the laws of nature, so too were governments and the lives of men. Political and moral philosophers from the classical era–onward argued that to live in harmony with “the law of nature and of nature’s God” as it was phrased in the Declaration, was to fulfill one’s end, the purpose for which one was created. The result was human well-being in the classical sense of eudaimonia. It was to flourish and, as a result, to be happy.

The founders spoke of happy people and happy governments, governments that would flourish because they were built on the principles most likely to effectuate their proper ends. The founders often summarized those ends as to “secure” the “safety and happiness” of the people. This lesser known reference to happiness also appears in the Declaration. Following their listing of the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right, the founders stated that it was the right of the people to place “[the government’s] foundation on such principles and organiz[e] its powers in such form, [as] to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” ⁷ To be safe, in this sense, was to be secure as a holder of one’s rights. To be happy was to flourish as a human being.

The drafters of the Declaration were not alone in these dual articulations of happiness. As Americans began drafting their first state constitutions following colonial separation from England, they started including in their constitutional texts both the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right, and the securing or effecting of the safety and happiness of the people as an end of good governance.

For example, the Virginia Constitution of 1776 was the first state constitution to be ratified following the Declaration of Independence. Virginia incorporated the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, drafted by George Mason, into its constitutional text, just before the framework of Virginia’s state government. The Virginia Declaration of Rights included the inherent right to “the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”⁸

The Virginia Declaration of Rights preceded the Declaration of Independence by a matter of months. Although the Virginia Declaration’s more expansive unalienable right to “pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety” was not adopted by the founders in drafting the Declaration of Independence, it was retained by Virginians when they incorporated their Declaration of Rights into their state constitution as a Bill of Rights. In addition to preserving the pursuit of happiness as an inherent right, Virginians maintained the production of happiness as an end of good government, stating: “of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best, which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety....”⁹

The wording here presumes that producing the happiness and safety of the people is a proper end of good governance, while recognizing that such happiness and safety could be met in varying degrees. In other words, according to the text different governmental frameworks would succeed to a greater or lesser degree in achieving these desired ends. Such wording is both normative, in delineating the proper ends of government, and prescriptive, anticipating the possibility of future changes in the “modes and forms of government” based on the “degree of happiness and safety” they produce. It is a concise reflection of the Declaration of Independence’s first two paragraphs on the ends of government.

We see a similar use and placement of happiness in the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, believed to be the longest-running written constitution in the world.¹⁰ Like the Virginia Constitution, the Massachusetts Constitution includes the pursuit of happiness among its unalienable rights, and does so without replicating the exact phrasing of the Declaration of Independence. Article I states:

All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.” ¹¹

Like the Virginia Constitution of 1776, the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 includes notable variations from the Declaration of Independence. For example, “in fine” may seem like a simple transitional phrase, but it is a substantive addition. The usage here is likely as it was understood in the classical Latin sense of “[i]n conclusion, in sum; finally; (also) in short.” ¹² It is both a concluding phrase and a summation of what came before, suggesting that “seeking and obtaining [. . .] safety and happiness” is not just one set of unalienable rights among several in the constitutional text but, instead, the summation of all rights, or, in other words, the rights by which other unalienable rights are protected. If one’s unalienable right to seek and obtain safety and happiness were to be protected, all other unalienable rights, such as life, liberty, and property, necessarily would be protected, too. With the addition of these two words, the drafters of the Massachusetts Constitution emphasized the interplay between the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right and the protection of the safety and happiness of the people as an end of good government.

The use of the phrase “among which may be reckoned” is similarly informative. Instead of including a definitive list of unalienable rights, the drafters of the Massachusetts Constitution made a definitive statement that such rights do exist. They then used “among which may be reckoned” to suggest an open-endedness to the articulation of what, exactly, those rights might be. To say it “may be reckoned,” that “the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; [and] that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property” are included “among” the “certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights” of persons is to suggest the articulated list of unalienable rights might be incomplete or later could be altered. This combination of reason (reckoning) and a curious, open-minded sense of humility that recognizes one’s own limitations is a hallmark of the founders’ intellectual approach to law and governance.

Finally, like the Virginia Constitution of 1776 and the Declaration of Independence before it, the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 couples its discussion of “happiness” as an unalienable right with “the happiness of the people” as an end of government. It does so not once, but twice — first in the preamble, and then again, with a slight nuance, in Article VII, by framing the rights of the people and the ends of government within the larger context of the common good. It states:

Government is instituted for the common good, for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people, and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government, and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.¹³

Virginia and Massachusetts are representative of American states’ early and longstanding inclusion of the unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness in their constitutional texts. In contrast, Missouri, which became a state in 1821, is representative of a later and similarly longstanding uncertainty about the legal meaning of the phrase.¹⁴ Missouri did not include the pursuit of happiness in its first state constitution of 1820, but added it with the ratification of its second state constitution over forty years later, in 1865. This inclusion was short-lived, as the phrase was removed only ten years later. While Delegate Todd failed in his effort to retain the unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness in the 1875 Constitution, he perhaps would be heartened to know that the conception of the pursuit of happiness and the ends of government he voiced in opposition to its removal were prevalent not only in founding era declarations of rights and constitutional texts, but also in a multitude of state constitutions that have been drafted and redrafted in the nearly 250 years since.

These constitutional texts include Missouri’s fourth and final constitution to date: the Missouri Constitution of 1945, which included the unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness with an expansiveness that reflects Delegate Todd’s rich legal and historical understanding of the phrase. The pursuit of happiness is included in Section 2, under a descriptive header that encapsulates each of its applications in early American law. Section 2 reads:

Section 2: Promotion of general welfare — natural rights of persons — equality under the law — purpose of government. That all constitutional government is intended to promote the general welfare of the people; that all persons have a natural right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and the enjoyment of the gains of their own industry; that all persons are created equal and are entitled to equal rights and opportunity under the law; that to give security to these things is the principle office of government, and that when government does not confer that security, it fails in its chief design.¹⁵

A government that “fails in its chief design” would be, to Delegate Todd and to the founders who came before him, of no use at all. On the flip side, to succeed in that chief design, by protecting the individual, unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness and by framing a government capable of securing the safety and happiness of the people, would be to fulfill the very ends for which governments are created. The result would be not only a happy government, but also (and consequently) a firm foundation for effecting the flourishing, well-being, or, in a word, happiness of its people.

¹ For a history of Missouri’s state constitutions and a summary of the conventions that preceded them, see “Missouri Constitutions, 1820-1945” at the Missouri Digital Heritage Hosted Collections on the Missouri Secretary of State’s website: https://cdm16795.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16795coll1.

² For Delegate Todd’s objection to omitting the pursuit of happiness from the 1875 Missouri Constitution, see Journal of the Missouri State Constitutional Convention of 1875 (The Hugh Stephens co., printers, 1920).

³ Mo. Const. art I §1 (1865).

⁴ Journal of the Missouri State Constitutional Convention.

⁵ Continental Congress, Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, National Archives, September 2025 https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript.

⁶ Thomas Jefferson was part of the original Committee of Five tasked with drafting the Declaration of Independence. After creating the initial rough draft, Jefferson circulated it to John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. All three men edited the document before they sent a clean copy back to the Committee of Five. From there, the Declaration of Independence was sent on to the Second Continental Congress, where it was once more heavily edited, resulting in the document we have today. For a full overview of the drafting of the Declaration and images of the rough drafts, see Carli N. Conklin, The Pursuit of Happiness in the Founding Era: An Intellectual History (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, Studies in Constitutional Democracy Series, 2019).

⁷ Continental Congress, Declaration of Independence.

⁸ George Mason, Virginia Declaration of Rights (April, 1776), “America’s Founding Documents,” National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/virginia-declaration-of-rights, and Va. Const. Bill of Rights, §1 (1776), https://encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/the-constitution-of-virginia-1776/.

⁹ Va. Const. Bill of Rights, §3 (1776), https://encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/the-constitution-of-virginia-1776/.

The delegates of Virginia’s Constitutional Convention of 1776 unanimously adopted its Declaration of Rights separately from, and about 2 weeks prior to, its Constitution or Framework of Government. Both became effective as of July 5, 1776, and the two were combined as a single document, opening with a statement that the rights included in the Virginia Declaration “do pertain to them, and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of government” with the subsequently adopted Virginia “CONSTITUTION, or FORM of GOVERNMENT” seeking to protect and secure those rights.

¹⁰ Mass. Const. (1780) from Oscar Handlin and Mary Handlin, eds. The Popular Sources of Political Authority: Documents on the Massachusetts Constitutionof 1780 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard Univeristy Press, 1966).

The delegates of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 combined these two types of text into a single document from the beginning with a Preamble to the whole, followed by “PART THE FIRST A Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts” and then “PART THE SECOND: The Frame of Government”.

¹¹Ibid.

¹² Oxford English Dictionary, “‘in fine’ (n.1), sense P.1.b,” https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/7482563719.

¹³ Mass. Const. Part I, art. VII, (1780) from The Founders’ Constitution, Vol. 1, Ch. 1, Doc. 6 (The University of Chicago Press), https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch1s6.html.

The Preamble begins with this paragraph: “The end of the institution, maintenance, and administration of government is to secure the existence of the body-politic, to protect it, and to furnish the individuals who compose it with the power of enjoying, in safety and tranquillity [sic], their natural rights and the blessings of life; and whenever these great objects are not obtained the people have a right to alter the government, and to take measures necessary for their safety, prosperity, and happiness.”

¹⁴ “Missouri Constitutions, 1820-1945,” Missouri Digital Heritage Hosted Collections, Missouri Secretary of State, https://cdm16795.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16795coll1.

¹⁵ Mo. Const. art I, §2 (1945).

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