History of the United States Volume Vi Part 29

2. He has forbidden his governors to pa.s.s laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operations till his a.s.sent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

3. He has refused to pa.s.s 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.

4. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the repository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

5. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.

6. 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 invasions from without, and convulsions within.

7. He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the laws for the naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pa.s.s others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

8. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his a.s.sent to laws for establis.h.i.+ng judiciary powers.

9. He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure on their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

10. He has erected a mult.i.tude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers, to hara.s.s our people and eat out their substance.

11. He has kept among us in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our Legislatures.

12. He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.

13. 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;

14. For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;

15. For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States;

16. For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;

17. For imposing taxes on us without our consent;

18. For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of a trial by jury;

19. For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses;

20. 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 colonies.

21. For taking away our charters, abolis.h.i.+ng our most valuable laws, and altering, fundamentally, the forms of our governments.

22. For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

23. He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.

24. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

25. 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.

26. 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.

27. He has excited domestic insurrection among 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.

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 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 our 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 circ.u.mstances 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 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 do all other acts and things which independent Stales 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.

The foregoing declaration was, by order of Congress, engrossed, and signed by the following members:

JOHN HANc.o.c.k.

NEW HAMPs.h.i.+RE.

Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton.

Ma.s.sACHUSETTS BAY.

Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry.

RHODE ISLAND.

Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery.

CONNECTICUT.

Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott.

NEW YORK.

William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris.

NEW JERSEY.

Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark.

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 M'Kean.

MARYLAND.

Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton.

VIRGINIA.

George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jun., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton.

NORTH CAROLINA.

William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn.

SOUTH CAROLINA. Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jun., Thomas Lynch, Jun., Arthur Middleton.

GEORGIA.