Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/438

people with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another.
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 injuries.	Not altered.
A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free. Future ages will scarcely believe that the hardiness of one man adventured, within the short compass of twelve years only, to lay a foundation so broad and so undisguised for tyranny over a people fostered and fixed in principles of freedom.	A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be rule 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 a jurisdiction over these our states. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here; no one of which could warrant so strange a pretension; these were effected at the expense of our own blood and treasure, unassisted by the wealth or the strength of Great Britain; that in constituting, indeed, our several forms of government, we had adopted one common king; thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league and amity with them; but that submission to their Parliament was no part of our Constitution, nor ever in idea, if history may be credited; and we appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, as well as to the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations which were likely to interrupt our connection and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity, and when occasions have been given them by the regular course of their laws, of removing from their councils the disturbers of our harmony, they have by their free election, re-established them in power. At this very time, too, they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch and foreign mercenaries to invade and destroy us. These facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce forever these unfeeling brethren. We must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace, friends. We might have been a free and a great people together; but a communication of grandeur and of freedom, it seems, is below their dignity.	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 its. 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 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 a war, in peace friends.