in many cases colonies by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. scarcely pa ralleled in the most barbarous ages and totally 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 harrass our people and eat out their sub stance. 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 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 into these [states]; 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 governors, and declaring us out of his allegiance and protection.] 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 [ ] 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 [] 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 [of existence.] [He has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property. 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: 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. excited do mestic insur 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 free 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 able us have and we have conjured them by would inevitably 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 expence 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 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. will tread it apart from them, and] acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our [eternal] separa We must therefore and hold them tion []! as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. We We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled, appealing to the su We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled, do in the name, and by the authority of the good peo-preme judge of the world for ple of these [states reject and the rectitude of our intentions, renounce all allegiance and sub- do in the name, and by the auiection to the kings of Great thority of the good people of Britain and all others who may these colonies, solemnly publish hereafter claim by, through or and declare, that these united under them; we utterly dissolve colonies are, and of right ought all political connection which may to be free and independent heretofore have subsisted between states; that they are absolved us and the people or parliament from all allegiance to the British of Great Britain: and finally crown, and that all political conwe do assert and declare these nection between them and the colonies to be free and indepen- state of Great Britain is, and dent states,] and that as free and ought to be, totally dissolved; independent states, they have and that as free and independent full power to levy war, conclude states, they have full power to peace, contract alliances, esta- levy war, conclude peace, con lish commerce, and to do all tract alliances, establish comother acts and things which inde-merce, and to do all other acts pendent states may of right do. and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour. 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 honour. The Declaration thus signed on the 4th, on paper, was engrossed on parchment, and signed again on the 2nd of August. [Some erroneous statements of the proceedings on the Declaration of Independence having got before the public in latter times, Mr. Samuel A. Wells asked explanations of me, which are given in my letter to him of May 12, '19, before and now again referred to.* I took notes in my place while these things were going on, and at their close wrote them out in form and with correctness, and from 1 to 7 of the two preceding sheets, are the originals then [* See Appendix, note B.] written; as the two following are of the earlier debates on the Cofederation, which I took in like manner.*] On Friday, July 12, the committee appointed to draw the articles of Confederation reported them, and, on the 22nd, the House resolved themselves into a committee to take them into consideration. On the 30th and 31st of that month, and 1st of the ensuing, those articles were debated which determined the proportion, or quota, of money which each state should furnish to the common treasury, and the manner of voting in Congress. The first of these articles was expressed in the original draught in these words. 'Art. XI. All charges of war and all other expences that shall be incurred for the common defence, or general welfare, and allowed by the United States assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several colonies in proportion to the number of inhabitants of every age, sex and quality, except Indians not paying taxes, in each colony, a true account of which, distinguishing the white inhabitants, shall be triennially taken and transmitted to the Assembly of the United States.' Mr. Chase moved that the quotas should be fixed, not by the number of inhabitants of every condition, but by that of the white inhabitants.' He admitted that taxation should be always in proportion to property, that this was, in theory, the true rule; but that, from a variety of difficulties, it was a rule which could never be adopted in practice. The value of the property in every state, could never be estimated justly and equally. Some other measure for the wealth of the state must therefore be devised, some standard referred to, which would be more simple. He considered the number of inhabitants as a tolerably good criterion of property, and that this might always be obtained. He therefore thought it the best mode which we could adopt, with one exception only: he observed that negroes are property, and as such, cannot be distinguished from the lands or personalities held in those states where there are few slaves; that the surplus of profit which a Northern farmer is able to lay by, he invests in cattle, horses, &c., whereas a Southern farmer lays out the same surplus in slaves. There is no more reason therefore for taxing the Southern states on the farmer's head, and on his slave's head, than the Northern ones on their farmer's heads and the heads of their cattle that the [The above note of the author is on a slip of paper, pasted in at the end of the Declaration. Here is also sewed into the MS. a slip of newspaper containing, under the head Declaration of Independence,' a letter from Thomas M'Kean to Messrs. William M'Corkle & Son, dated Philadelphia, June 16, 1817. This letter is to be found in the Port Folio, Sept. 1817, p. 249.] |