Volume I Part 2 (2/2)
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 endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pa.s.s others to encourage their migrations. .h.i.ther, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has [_suffered_] (obstructed) the administration of justice [_totally to cease in some of these states_] (by) refusing his a.s.sent to laws for establis.h.i.+ng judiciary powers.
He has made [_our_] judges dependant on his will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a mult.i.tude of new offices, [_by a self-a.s.sumed power_]
and sent hither swarms of new officers to hara.s.s our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies [_and s.h.i.+ps of war_] 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 const.i.tutions and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his a.s.sent 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 abolis.h.i.+ng the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establis.h.i.+ng 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 [_states_] (colonies); for taking away our charters, abolis.h.i.+ng 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 cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here [_withdrawing his governors, and declaring us out of his allegiance and protection._] (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 complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circ.u.mstances of cruelty and 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 amoungst us and has) endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, s.e.xes, and conditions [_of existence._]
[_He has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property.
He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and, 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 and sold, he has prost.i.tuted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this a.s.semblage 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 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 pet.i.tioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated pet.i.tions have been answered only by repeated injuries.
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 [_who mean to be free. Future ages will scarcely believe that the hardiness of one man adventured, within the short compa.s.s of twelve years only, to lay a foundation so broad and so undisguised for tyranny over a people fostered and fixed in principles of freedom._]
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 [_a_] (an unwarrantable) jurisdiction over [_these our states_] (us). We have reminded them of the circ.u.mstances of our emigration and settlement here, [_no one of which could warrant so strange a pretension: that these were effected at the expense of our own blood and treasure, una.s.sisted by the wealth or the strength of Great Britain: that in const.i.tuting indeed our several forms of government, we had adopted one common king, thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league and amity with them: but that submission to their parliament was no part of our const.i.tution, nor ever in idea, if history may be credited: and,_] we [ ] (have) appealed to their native justice and magnanimity [_as well as to_] (and we have conjured them by) the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which [_were likely to_] (would inevitably) interrupt our connection and 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 renounce for ever 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 and of freedom, it seems, is below their dignity. Be it so, since they will have it. The road to happiness and to glory is open to us too. We will tread it apart from them, and_] (We must therefore) acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our [eternal] 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 a.s.sembled, do in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these states reject and renounce all allegiance and subjection to the kings of Great Britain and all others who may hereafter claim by, through, or under them; we utterly dissolve all political connection which may heretofore have subsisted between us and, the people or parliament of Great Britain: and finally we do a.s.sert and declare these colonies to be free and independent states, 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, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor._]
(We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress a.s.sembled, appealing to the supreme judge of the world for the rect.i.tude of our intentions, do in the name, and by the 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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