US
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE Continued
Prudence, indeed, will
dictate that Governments long established should not be changed
for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience
hath shown, 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
endeavored 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 neighboring
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 cases
whatsoever.
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
complete 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 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, 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.
Georgia
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton
North
Carolina
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton
Massachusetts
John Hancock
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Maryland
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton
Pennsylvania
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean
New York
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark
New
Hampshire
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Matthew Thornton
Rhode Island
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
