As the Declaration of Independence makes clear, governments are instituted in order to secure certain rights that God has given us, the citizens. Such rights include a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A government's powers are to be used to secure those rights, as the government's powers are derived from the people themselves. There is no sense, then, in which a government has a divine right to rule; it only governs on the basis of the consent of the governed. If such consent is not forthcoming for any reason, then the government loses its legitimacy.

Once the government has been established, the people, ever-vigilant, should keep a close eye on it to make sure that it does what it's supposed to do: secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If the government is incapable of doing this, of carrying out its most basic functions, then the people are perfectly entitled to get rid of it and establish a new one in its place.

This may not seem like a very unusual idea today, but in those days, it was a revolutionary principle. Apologists for absolutism in Europe regarded the government as sacred, something that could be gradually reformed over time but which most certainly could not be overthrown if it failed to carry out its most basic functions. But the American revolutionaries had a completely different view of government. For them, government was a man-made institution that could be dismantled and put back together again if it didn't properly discharge its functions.