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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

HOUSE IN WHICH JEFFERSON WROTE THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

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 formal system 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.

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laws of nature and of nature's God en- He has refused his assent to laws the title them, a decent respect for the opin- most wholesome and necessary for the ions of mankind requires that they should public good. declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operations 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.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain 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 the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a 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 people. transient causes; and, accordingly, all

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

He has refused, for a long time after

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

such dissolutions, to cause others to be He has made judges dependent on his elected; whereby the legislative powers, will alone for the tenure of their offices incapable of annihilation, have returned and the amount and payment of their to the people at large for their exercise; the State remaining, in the mean time, exposed to all the danger of invasion from without and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose

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 time of peace,

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GARDEN HOUSE IN WHICH JEFFERSON AND OTHERS CELEBRATED THE PASSAGE OF THE DECLARATION.

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 many

us, in

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 law 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 government:

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 cf foreign mercenaries, to complete the works of death, desolation, and

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TABLE AND CHAIR USED AT THE SIGNING OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

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READING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, CITY HALL SQUARE, NEW YORK CITY

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