A Declaration by the Representatives of the UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA in General Congress assembled.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a
people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto
remained, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate
and equal station to which the laws of nature & 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 sacred & undeniable: that all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent &
inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, & 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, & to
institute new government, laying it's foundation on such principles,
& organising it's powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their safety & happiness. prudence indeed will
dictate that governments long established should not be changed for
light & transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn
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 & usurpations pursuing
invariably the same object, evinces a design to subject them
to arbitrary power, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off
such government, & to provide new guards for their future security.
such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; & such is now
the necessity which constrains them to expunge their former systems
of government. the history of his present majesty is a history of
repeated injuries and usurpations, among which appears no solitary
fact to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest, but 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 wholesome & necessary for
the public good:
he has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate &
pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation
till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended,
he has neglected utterly 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, &
formidable to tyrants only:
he has called together legislative bodies in places unusual,
uncomfortable & 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 & 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 meantime exposed to all the dangers of
invasion from without, & 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;
& raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands:
he has suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in
some of these colonies, 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 amount of their Salaries:
he has erected a multitude of new offices by a self-assumed power,
& sent hither swarms of new officers to harass our people & eat
out their substance:
he has kept among us in times of peace without our consent standing
armies, & ships of war without the consent of our legislatures:
he has affected to render the military independent of, & 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 it's boundaries so as to render it at once an example & fit
instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies;
for taking away our charters, & altering fundamentally the forms of
our governments;
for suspending our own legislatures & declaring themselves
invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever:
he has abdicated government here, withdrawing his governors,
& declaring us out of his allegiance & protection:
he has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns,
& destroyed the lives of our people:
he is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries
to compleat the works of death, desolation & tyranny, already begun
with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy unworthy the head of a
civilized nation:
he has endeavored to bring onto the inhabitants of our frontiers
the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare in an
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, & conditions of
existence:
he has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow-citizens,
with the allurements of forfeiture & confiscation of our property:
he has constrained others, falling into his hands on the high
seas to bear arms against their country, & to destroy & be
destroyed by their brethren whom they love, to become the
executioners of their friends & brethren, or to fall themselves
by their hands:
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating
it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of
a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying
them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable
death in their transportation thither. this 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 & sold, he has prostituted his negative for
suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain
this execrable commerce: & that this assemblage of horrors might
want no fact of distinguished dye, 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 upon 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 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 people who mean to be free. future
ages will scarce believe that the hardiness of one man
adventured, within the short compass of 12 years only, to build
a foundation so broad and undisguised for tyranny over a people
fostered & fixed in principles of freedom.
Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren.
we have warned them from time 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 &
settlement here, no one of which could warrant so strange a
pretension: that these were effected at the expence of our own
blood & 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 & 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 & magnanimity, as well as the ties of our
common kindred to disavow these usurpations which were likely to
interrupt our correspondence. they too have been deaf to the
voice of justice & of consanguinity, & 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
they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only
soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch & foreign mercenaries to
invade and deluge us in blood. these facts have given the last
stab to agonizing affection, & manly spirit bids us to renounce
forever these unfeeling brethren. we must endeavor to forget our
former love for them, and to hold them, as we hold the rest of
mankind, enemies in war, in peace, friends. we might have been a
free & a great people together; but a communication of grandeur &
of freedom it seems is below their dignity. be it so, since they
will have it: the road to glory & happiness is open to us too;
we will climb it apart from them in a separate state, and
acquiesce in the necessity which pronounces our everlasting Adieu!
We therefore the representatives of the United States of
America in General Congress assembled, do, in the name & by the
authority of the good people of these states, reject & renounce
all allegiance & subjection to the kings of Great Britain & all
others who may hereafter claim, by, through, or under them; we
utterly dissolve & break off all political connection which may
have heretofore subsisted between us & the people or parliament
of Great Britain; and finally we do assert and declare these
colonies to be free and independent states, and that as free &
independent states they shall hereafter have power to levy war,
conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, & do all
other acts 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, & our sacred honour.
