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A DECLARATION BY THE
REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED.
When, in the course of
human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the
political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume,
among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the
laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which
impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable 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 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, 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 former systems 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 the
absolute tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted
to a candid world:
He has refused to 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 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 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 meantime, 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 migration hither, and raising the conditions of new
appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the
administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing
judiciary powers.
He has made 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, 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 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 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 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, in many cases,
of the benefit of trial by jury: For transporting us beyond seas to be
tried for pretended offenses 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 colonies:
For taking away our
charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering, fundamentally,
the powers 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, by declaring us out of his 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 domestic
insurrections amongst us, and 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.
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 injury. 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.
Nor have we been wanting in
attention to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time,
of attempts made by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable
jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our
emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice
and magnanimity, and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common
kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt
our connections and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice
of justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the
necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the
rest of mankind, enemies in war—in peace, friends.
We, therefore, the
representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress
assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude
of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people
of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United
Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that
they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all
political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and
ought to be, totally dissolved; and that as free and independent States,
they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances,
establish commerce, and to 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 Providence, we mutually pledge
to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
The signers represented the
States as follows:
New Hampshire: Josiah
Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton.
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge
Gerry.
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery.
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver
Wolcott.
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris.
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John
Hart, Abraham Clark.
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John
Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George
Ross.
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Reed, Thomas McKean.
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of
Carrollton.
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin
Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jun., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton.
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn.
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jun., Thomas Lynch, Jun.,
Arthur Middleton.
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton.
It may be noted that
several of these were not members of Congress when the Declaration was
passed. |
