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DECLARATION OF INDIPENDENCE: JULY 4, 1776
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 are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable 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 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 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
invasions 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 migration 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 offenses;
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, burned
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
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,
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 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 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 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 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.
[Signed by] JOHN HANCOCK [President]
New Hampshire: JOSIAH BARTLETT, WM. WHIPPLE, MATTHEW
THORNTON.
Massachusetts Bay: SAML. ADAMS, JOHN ADAMS, ROBT. TREAT
PAINE, ELBRIDGE GERRY.
Rhode Island: STEP. HOPKINS, WILLIAM ELLERY.
Connecticut: ROGER SHERMAN, SAM'EL HUNTINGTON, WM.
WILLIAMS, OLIVER WOLCOTT.
New York: WM. FLOYD, PHIL. LIVINGSTON, FRANS. LEWIS,
LEWIS MORRIS.
New Jersey: RICHD. STOCKTON, JNO. WITHERSPOON, FRAS.
HOPKINSON, JOHN HART, ABRA. CLARK.
Pennsylvania: ROBT. MORRIS, BENJAMIN RUSH, BENJA.
FRANKLIN, JOHN MORTON, GEO. CLYMER, JAS. SMITH, GEO.
TAYLOR, JAMES WILSON, GEO. ROSS.
Delaware: CAESAR RODNEY, GEO. READ, THO. M'KEAN.
Maryland: SAMUEL CHASE, WM. PACA, THOS. STONE, CHARLES
CARROLL of Carrollton.
Virginia: GEORGE WYTHE, RICHARD HENRY LEE, TH.
JEFFERSON, BENJA. HARRISON, THS. NELSON, JR., FRANCIS
LIGHTFOOT LEE, CARTER BRAXTON.
North Carolina: WM. HOOPER, JOSEPH HEWES, JOHN PENN.
South Carolina: EDWARD RUTLEDGE, THOS. HAYWARD, JUNR.,
THOMAS LYNCH, JUNR., ARTHUR MIDDLETON.
Georgia: BUTTON GWINNETT, LYMAN HALL, GEO. WALTON.
FONTE: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/declare.htm
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