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the forms of our governments; for suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

by declaring He has abdicated government here [withdrawing us out of his his governors, and declaring us out of his allegi-protection and ance and protection.]

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

war

against us

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 [ ] unworthy the head of a scarcely parcivilized nation.

alleled in the most barbar

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive ous ages and on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to totally become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

rections

He has [] endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants excited doof our frontiers the merciless Indian Savages, whose mestic insurknown rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions [of existence.] has

[He has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property.

He has urged 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. This piratical warfare, the opprobium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one 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. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of 11

among us, and

free

us

have

able

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.]

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time an unwarrant- 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: that 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 and we have native justice and magnanimity [as well as to] the conjured them ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpaby tions which [were likely to] interrupt our connection would inevita- and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the tably 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 for ever 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. Be it so, since they will have it. The road to happiness and to glory is open to us too, We will tread it apart from them, and] acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our and hold them [eternal] separation [ ]!

We must therefore

as we hold the

rest of man

kind, enemies in war, in

peace,

friends.

We therefore the representatives of the

rectitude of our intentions

United States of America in General Con-appealing to the supreme gress assembled, [] do in the name, and by judge of the world for the the authority of the good people of these [states reject and renounce all allegiance colonies, solemnly publish and subjection to the kings of Great Brit- and declare, that these uniain and all others who may hereafter ted colonies are, and of claim by, through, or under them; we ut- independent states; that right ought to be, free and terly dissolve all political connection which they are absolved from all may heretofore have subsisted between us allegiance to the British and the people or parliament of Great crown, and that all politiBritain and finally we do assert and de- them and the state of Great clare these colonies to be free and indepen- Britain is, and ought to be, dent states,] and that as free and indepen- totally dissolved; dent 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.

cal connection between

And for the support of this declaration, [ ] with a firm reliance on the protection of divine we mutually pledge to each other our lives, providence,

our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

The world has long since passed judgment upon the relative merits of these two forms of the American Declaration, and awarded the palm of pre-eminence to the primitive one. The amendments obliterated some of its boldest and brightest features; impaired the beauty and force of others; and softened the general tone of the whole instrument.

The Declaration thus amended in Committee of the Whole, was reported to the House on the 4th of July, agreed to, and signed by every member present, except Mr. Dickinson. On the 19th of July, it was ordered to be engrossed on parchment; and on the 2d of August, the engrossed copy, after being compared at the table with the original, was ordered to be signed by every member.

On the same day that Independence was declared, Mr. Jefferson was appointed one of a committee of three, to devise an appropriate Coat of Arms for the republic of the United States of America.'

The Declaration was received by the people with unbounded admiration and joy. On the 8th of July it was promulgated, with great solemnity, at Philadelphia, and saluted by the assembled multitude, with peals on peals of acclammation. On the 11th it was published in New-York, and proclaimed before the American Army, which, at that time, was assembled in the vicinity, with all the

pomp and circumstance of a military pageant. It was received with delirious exultation by the collected chivalry of the Revolution. They filled the air with their shouts, and shook the earth with the thunders of their artillery. In Boston, the popular transports were unparalleled. The national manifesto was proclaimed from the balcony of the Capitol, in the presence of all the authorities, civil and military, and of an innumerable concourse of people. An immense banquet was prepared, at which the authorities, and all the principal citizens attended, and drank toasts expressive of enthusiastic veneration for liberty, and of unmingled detestation of tyrants. The rejoicings were continued through the night, and every ensign of royalty, that adorned either the public or private edifice, was demolished before morning.

Similar demonstrations of patriotic enthusiasm, crowned the reception of the Declaration in all the cities and chief towns of the continent. Its progress through the land was like the triumphal procession of a mighty deliverer.

In Virginia, the annunciation was greeted with graver tokens of public felicitation. The Convention decreed, that the name of the King should be expunged from the liturgy of the established religion. All the remaining emblems of royal authority, were superseded by appropriate representatives of the new order of things. A new Coat of Arms for the Commonwealth, was immediately ordered. Several devices were proposed. One by Dr. Franklin, with the motto, "Rebellion to Tyrants, in obedience to God." Another by Mr. Jefferson, with the characteristic motto, "Rex est qui regem non habet." And another by Mr. Wythe, which was adopted. It represented Virtue as the tutelary Genius of the Commonwealth, robed in the drapery of an Amazon, resting one hand upon a spear, and holding with the other a sword, trampling upon Tyranny, personified by a prostrate man, with a crown fallen from his head, bearing in one hand a broken chain, and in the other a scourge. Around the exergon were inscribed, at the top, Virginia, and underneath, the words, Sic semper tyrannis. On the reverse, was charactered a group of figures; Libertas in the centre, with her wand and cap; on one side Ceres, with her horn of plenty in the right hand, and a sheaf of wheat in the left; on the other side appeared Eternity, with the Globe and Phoenix. Around the exergon were inscribed these words, Deus nobis haec otia fecit.

Such were some of the immediate influences of this immortal State-paper. But who shall describe its ulterior influences, physical, moral, and political, upon America, and upon all the fellow nations of the earth? Those which have already transpired, have been stupendous; some benificent, others calamitous, yet all the harbingers of final glory: and those which have yet to transpire, 、 the human mind can scarcely exaggerate to its vision. Volumes might be written in illustrating the agency of this teeming record, in advancing the well-being of nations, and augmenting the amount of human happiness. That portion of its blessings, which descended to its immediate inheritors, or which is possessed by the present inhabitants of the globe, comprises but a partial account in the estimate. It is the sun of the political universe. It is the focus of revolutionary light and heat, from which have issued those kindred rays and impulses, which have warmed, and enlightened, and agitated, and plunged into kindred convulsions, for the recovery of their just rights, the oppressed, king-bestridden, and law-ridden people of other countries, in almost every part of the earth. It laid the foundation for the first great and successful experiment of free government; of a government, whose career of success has been so unexampled, as to have already secured to it a pre-eminence of character among the Powers of the earth; and whose greatness in the scale of empire, will one day enable it, if it should so please, to dictate to all other governments. The effects of this potent example, were soon visible, in that tremendous struggle for political reformation, which shook to its centre the gigantic empire of France, -in those less formidable ones, which more recently, and at fitful intervals, have shaken the whole continent of South America,and in that steady and peaceable process of regeneration, which at this moment, is undermining the strong pillars of that Power, from which was hewn the first member in the sisterhood of Free States. The principles of the Declaration of Independence, have occasioned this great and growing change in the political destinies of the world. The knowledge of that renowned charter has reared, and is fast rearing, disciples to its master, among the darkest portions of civilized humanity. It has been heard and felt, wherever the art of printing has communicated it to the mind of man; nor will the period arrive when it shall cease to be felt and feared, until the last

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