Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 03.djvu/348

DECLABATION OF INDEP'E 296 DECXARATION OF INDEP'E 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 3euses which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ; that they are en- dowed 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 gov- ernment becomes destructive of these ends, it Is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute 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 ex- perience 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 govern- ment, and to provide new guards for their fu- ture security. Such has been the patient suffer- ance of these colonies, and such is now the ne- cessity 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 abso- lute tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world : He has refused to 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 ac- commodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of rep- resentation in the legislature ; a right inesti- mable to them, and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the dfpository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with 'is measures. He iias dissolved representative houses re- peatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused, for a long time after such dissolutiors, to cause others to be elected ; whereby tiic legislative powers, incapable of an- nihilation, hnve returned to the people at large for their exercise ; the State remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the dangers of inva- sion 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 ; refus- ing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appro- priations of lands. He has obstructed the administration of Jus- tice, by refusing his assent to laws for establish- ing 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 ofilcers to harass our people, and eat out of their aubstance. He has kept among us. In times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our leg- islatures. He has affected to render the military inde- pendent 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 bene- fit 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 powers of our governments : For suspending our own legislatures, and de- claring themselves Invested with power to leg- islate for us in all cases whatsover : He has abdicated government here, by de- claring 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 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 amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhab- itants of our frontiers, the merciless Indl^in 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 an- swered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character Is thus naarked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the 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 made by their legis- lature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. 'We have reminded them of the cir- cumstances 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 inter- rupt our connections and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold Ihe 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 ot 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 alle- giance to the British crown, and that all polit- ical connection between them and the State Of Great Britain is, and ought to be. totally dis- solved : 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 acta and things which Inde-