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The Declaration of
Independence
IN CONGRESS, July 4,
1776.
The Unanimous
Declaration of the Thirteen United States of
America,
When in the Course of
human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected them with
another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the
separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and
of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the
causes which impel them to the separation.
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(sic), 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.
- He has refused his
assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the
public good.
- He has forbidden his
Governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing
importance, unless suspended in their operation till his
assent should be obtained; and 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 and 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, for opposing with manly
firmness his invasions on the rights of the
people.
- 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 mean time
exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and
convulsions within.
- He has
endeavoured(sic) to prevent the population of these
States; for that purpose obstructing the laws for
naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to
encourage their migrations hither, and raising the
conditions of new appropriations of lands.
- He has obstructed the
administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws
for establishing judiciary powers.
- He has made judges
dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their
offices, and the amount and payment of their
salaries.
- He has erected a
multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of
Officers to harass our people, and eat out their
substance.
- He has kept among us,
in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of
our legislatures.
- He has affected to
render the military independent of and superior to the
civil power.
- He has combined with
others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our
constitution, and unacknowledged 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
on us without our consent:
- For depriving us in
many cases, 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 neighbouring
province, establishing therein an arbitrary
government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to
render it at once an example and fit instrument for
introducing the same absolute rule into these
colonies:
- For taking away our
charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and
altering fundamentally the forms of our
governments:
- For suspending our
own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested
with power to legislate for us in all
caseswhatsoever.
- He has abdicated
government here, by declaring us out of his protection
and waging war against us.
- He has plundered our
seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed
the lives of our people.
- He is at this time
transporting large Armies of foreign mercenaries to
compleat(sic) the works of death, desolation and tyranny,
already begun with circumstances of cruelty & perfidy
scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and
totally unworthy the head of a civilized
nation.
- 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 and brethren, or to fall themselves by
their hands.
- He has excited
domestic insurrections amongst us, and has
endeavoured(sic) to bring on the inhabitants of our
frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule
of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all
ages, sexes and conditions.
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 injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked
by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the
ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting
in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them
from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend
an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them
of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here.
We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity,
and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred
to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably
interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have
been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We
must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces
our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of
mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the
representatives of the United States of America, in General
Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the
world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name,
and by authority of the good people of these colonies,
solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies
are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States;
that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British
crown, and that all political connection between them and
the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally
dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they
have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract
alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and
things which independent states may of right do. And for the
support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the
protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each
other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
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