quires, that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. certain We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with [inherent and] inalienable 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 a 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 distinguished 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 the Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to [expunge] their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of [unremitting] injuries repeated and usurpations, [among which appears no solitary fact to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest, but all all having have] 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 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 alter obstructed by their public 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 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 invasion 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 migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has [suffered] the administration of justice [totally to cease in some of these States] refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made [our] judges dependant 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 new 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 superior to, the civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions 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 in many without our consent; for depriving us [ ]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 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 incolonies to these [states]; for taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally cases OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 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. waging 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 barbarous ages He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive 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 and 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 destruc- among us, and tion 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. He has urged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persms 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 has free us have able and we have 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 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 inevita-and 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. 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 mankind, enemies in war, in peace, friends. We OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in General Con- appealing to the supreme judge of the world for the gress assembled, [ ] do in the name, and by rectitude of our intentions the authority of the good people of these right ought to be, free and cal connection between [states reject and renounce all allegiance colonies, solemnly publishi 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 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. 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 The amendments obpalm of pre-eminence to the primitive one. literated 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 |