such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; & such is Λ them Λ now the necessity which constrains to [expunge] their former systems of government, the history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of [unremitting] injuries & usurpations, [among which appears no solitary fact to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest but all have], in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states, to prove this let facts be submitted to a candid world [for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.] 44 he has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome & necessary for the public good. he has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate & pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; & when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. he has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them, & formidable to tyrants only. he has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. he has dissolved representative houses repeatedly [& continually] for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. 9. he has refused for a long time after such dissolutions to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise, the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without & convulsions within. he has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of for- Λ Λ he has made [our] judges dependant on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, & the amount & paiment of their salaries. he has erected a multitude of new offices [by a self assumed power] and sent hither swarms of new officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. he has kept among us in times of peace standing armies [and ships of war] without the consent of our legislatures. he has affected to render the military independant of, & superior to the civil power. he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions & unacknoleged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us; for protecting them by a mock-trial from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states; for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world; for imposing taxes in many cases on us with out our consent; for depriving us of the benefits of trial by jury; for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences; for abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary [The following is on the reverse side of page 9:] 10. Λ government, and enlarging it's boundaries, so as to render it at Λ A colonies & declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. he has abdicated government here [withdrawing his governors, by declaring us Λ and declaring us out of his allegiance & protection] out of his protectian & wagin] he has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, war against us. & destroyed the lives of our people. he is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation & tyranny scarcely paralalready begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy unworthy the head of a civilized nation. Λ he has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends & brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. Λ leled in the most barbarous ages & totally insurrections among us, & has he has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers excited domestic the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, & conditions [of existence.] [he has excited treasonable insurrections of our fellow-citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture & confiscation of our property. he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery 45 in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither, this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain, determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on Λ Λ Ʌ us whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another. 11. In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injuries. Λ a prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be a ruler of a people [who mean to be free. future ages will scarcely believe that the hardiness of one man adventured, within the short compass of twelve years only, to lay a foundation so broad & so undisguised for tyranny over a people fostered & fixed in principles of freedom.] Λ Nor have we been wanting in our attentions to our British brethren, we have warned them from time to time of attempts by an unwarrantable their legislature to extend [a] jurisdiction over [these our states.] we have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration & settlement here, [no one of which could warrant so strange a pretension that these were effected at the expence of our own blood & treasure, unassisted by the wealth or strength of Great Britain that in constituting indeed our several forms of government, we had adopted one common king, thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league & amity with them: but that submission to their parliament was no part of our constitution, nor ever in idea, if history may be credited: and] 46 we appealed to their native justice and magnanimity as well as to] the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which [were likely to] interrupt our connection and correspondence, they too have been deaf to the voice of justice & of consanguinity, [and when occasions have been given them, by the regular course of their laws, of removing from their councils the disturbers of our harmony, they have by their free election, re-established them in power at this very time too they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only souldiers of our common blood, Λ have and we have conjured them by Λ would inevitably X Λ Λ but Scotch 48 & foreign mercenaries to invade & destroy us. these facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce forever these unfeeling brethren, we must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. we might have been a free and a great people together; but a communication of grandeur & of freedom it seems is below their dignity. be it so, since they will have it. the road to happiness & to glory is open to us too. we will tread it apart from them, Awe must therefore and] acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our [eternal] Λ and hold them as separation! we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. 12. [The following is on the reverse side of page 11:] We therefore the representatives of the United states of America in General Congrefs assembled, appealing to the supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the name, & by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish & declare that these United colonies are & of right ought to be free & independant states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them & the state of Great Britain is, & ought to be, totally dissolved; & that as free & We therefore the representatives of the United states of America in General Congress assembled do in the name, & by the authority of the good people of these [states reject & renounce all allegiance & subjection to the kings of Great Britain & all others who may hereafter claim by, through or under them: we utterly dissolve all political connection which may heretofore have subsisted between us & the people or parliament of Great Britain : & finally we do assert & declare these colonies to be free & independant states,] & that as free & independant states, they have full | independant states they have full power power to levy war, conclude peace, to levy war, conclude peace, contract contract alliances, establish commerce, alliances, establish commerce & to do & to do all other acts & things which all other acts & things which independindependant states may of right do. ant states may of right do. and for the support of this declara- and for the support of this declaration, tion we mutually pledge to each other with a firm reliance on the protection of our lives, our fortunes & our sacred divine providence we mutually pledge honour. to each other our lives, our fortunes & our sacred honour. |