piness; 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 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, begun at a distant period and 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] expunge their former systems of government.

"The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of [repeated] unremitting injuries and usurpations, among which appears no solitary fact to contradict the uniform tenour of the rest; but all have [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, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.

"He has refused his assent to laws the most whole some and necessary for the publick good.

"He has forbidden his Governours 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 publick records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

"He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly and continually, for opposing with manly firmnesshis 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 legis lative 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 invasion from without and convulsions within.

"He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither; and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

"He has suffered [obstructed] the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these states, [by]

A

refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary

powers.

"He has made our 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, by a self-assumed power, 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 and ships of war, without the consent of our legislatures.

"He has affected to render the military independent of and superiour 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 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 offences:

"For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighbouring 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 states [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, withdrawing his Governours, and [by] declaring us out of his allegiance and 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 domestick insurrections among us, and has] endeavoured 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 of existence.

"He has incited treasonable insurrections of our

fellow citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property.

This

"He has waged 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. piratical warfare, the opprobrium 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 at tempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrours 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 a [free] people who mean to be free. Future ages will scarcely believe that the hardiness of one man adventured, within the short compass of twelve