North America Volume II Part 17

He has erected a mult.i.tude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to hara.s.s our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in time 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 const.i.tution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his a.s.sent 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 offences.

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighbouring 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 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 circ.u.mstances 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 endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, s.e.xes, and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions, we have pet.i.tioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated pet.i.tions 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 a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren.

We have warned them, from time to time, of the attempts by their legislature, to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circ.u.mstances 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 of 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 a.s.sembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rect.i.tude 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 honour.

The foregoing declaration was, by order of Congress, engrossed, and signed by the following members:

JOHN HANc.o.c.k.

_New Hampshire._

Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton.

_Ma.s.sachusetts Bay._

Samuel Adams, John 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 Read, Thomas M'Kean.

_Maryland._

Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton.

_Virginia._

George Wythie, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr.

Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton.

_North Carolina._

William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn.

_South Carolina._

Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr.

Thomas Lynch, Jr.

Arthur Middleton.

_Georgia._