The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing Part 43

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

In Congress, July 4, 1776.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to a.s.sume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and Nature's G.o.d ent.i.tle 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 inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are inst.i.tuted 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 inst.i.tute a 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 has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

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

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, 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 meantime, 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 migration hither, and raising conditions of new appropriation of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his a.s.sent to laws establis.h.i.+ng 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 mult.i.tude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers, to hara.s.s our people, and to 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 const.i.tution, 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 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 the seas to be tried for pretended offenses.

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.

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, 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 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 ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention 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 connection 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 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.

The foregoing declaration was, by order of the 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 McKean.

Maryland--Samuel Chase, William Paco, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton.

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

North Carolina--William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn.

South Carolina--Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton.

Georgia--b.u.t.ton Gwinett, Lyman Hall, George Walton.

The following clause formed part of the original Declaration of Independence as signed, but was finally left out of the printed copies "out of respect to South Carolina":

"He [King George III.] 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."