A
Declaration by the Representatives
of
the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
in
General Congress assembled.
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
certain
are endowed by their Creator with inherent
and ^ inalienable 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 organising it’s 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 & 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, begun at a
distinguished period, & 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, & to provide new
guards for their future security. such
has been the patient sufferance of
alter
these colonies; & such is now the necessity which constrains them
to expunge ^ their former systems of government. the history of the present king of Great
Britain. is a
repeated
history of unremitting ^ injuries and usurpations, among which appears no solitary fact
having
to contradict the uniform tenor ofthe 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.
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 & pressing importance, unless
suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so
utterly
suspended, he has ^ neglected utterly 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, & 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.
he has refused for
a long time after such dissolutions to cause others to be elected whereby the
legislative powers, incapable of the 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, & the convulsions within.
he has endeavoured
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; & raising the conditions of new appropriations of
lands.
obstructed
he has suffered ^ the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these
by
states; ^ refusing his assent to laws for establishing
judiciary powers.
he has made our judges dependent on his will alone,
for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and paiment of their salaries.
he has erected a
multitude of new offices by a self assumed
power; & sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our
people, and eat out their substance.
he has kept among
us, in time of peace, standing armies and
ships of war; without the consent of our legislatures.
he has affected to
render the military independent of, & superior to, the civil power.
he has combined
with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions and
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
on us without our consent;
in many cases
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 government and enlarging it’s boundaries so as to render it at once
an example & fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into
these states.
for taking away
our charters abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the
forms of our government
for suspending our
own legislatures, & declaring themselves invested with power to legislate
for us in all cases whatsoever.
by
he has abdicated
government here, withdrawing his governors,
& ^ declaring us
and
waging war against us
out of his allegiance and
protection ^.
he has plundered
our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our Towns, & 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, already begun with circumstances of cruelty
&
scarcely paralleled in the most
barbarous ages, and totally
perfidy ^ unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
he has ^
endeavoured 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 & conditions of existence.
he has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow
citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture & confiscation of property.
our fellow citizens
he has constrained
^ others, taken captives 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.
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating
it’s most sacred rights of life &
liberty in the persons of a distant people, who never offended him, captivating
and carrying them into slavery 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 excerable commerce; and
that this assemblage of horrors might want
no fact of distinguished die, he now 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 upon 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.
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
free
be the ruler of a ^ people who mean to
be free, future ages will scarce believe that the hardiness of one man
adventured within the short compass of twelve years only, to build a
foundation, so broad and undisguised, for tyranny over a people fostered and
fixed in principles of freedom.
Nor have we been
wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. we have warned
an
unwarrantable us.
them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend a ^ jurisdiction over ^ these our states. we have reminded them of the circumstances
of our emigration and settlement here, no one of which could warrant so strange a pretension; that
these were affected at the expense of our own blood and treasure; unassisted by
the wealth or the strength of Great Britain; that in constituting indeed our
several forms of government, we had adopted on common king; thereby laying a
foundation for perpetual league and amity with them; but that submission to
their parliament was no
have
part of our constitution, or ever in idea, if history may be
credited; and we ^ appealed
and we have conjured them by
to their native justice and magnanimity, as well as to ^ the tyes of our common
kindred,
would inevitably s
to disavow these usurpations, which were
likely to ^ interrupt our connection^ &
correspondence. they too have been deaf
to the voice of justice and 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 soldiers of our common
blood, but Scotch and foreign mercenaries to invade and destroy us. these facts
have given the last stab to agonizing affection; and manly spirit bids us to
renouce forever these unfeeling
therefore
brethren. we must ^ endeavor to forget our former love for them, and to hold
them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends, we
might have been a free & great people together; but a communication of
grandeur and of freedom. it seems, is below dignity, be it so, since they will
have it, the road to happiness and to glory is open to us too; we will climb it
apart from them and acquiesce in the necessity
and
hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
which denounces our eternal
separation ^.
We therefore the
Representatives of the United states of America, in General
appealing
to the supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions,
Congress assembled, ^ 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
states, reject ^ and renounce all
allegiance and subjection to the kings of Great Britain, & all others who
may hereafter claim by, through, or under them; we utterly dissolve
them state
all political connection which may
heretofore have subsisted between us ^
and the ^
is & ought to be totally dissolved;
parliament or people of Great Britain; ^ and finally we do asssert [and declare] these colonies to be
free and independant states, & that as free &
independant states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract
alliances, establish commerce, & to do all other acts and things which
independant states may of right do. And
for the
with firm reliance on the protection of divine
providence,
support of this declaration, ^
we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred
honor.