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DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
In Congress July 4, 1776
The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America
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]
[and fifty-five others]