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 to these ends, it is the right of the people
to alter or to abolish it, and to institute 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 an absolute tyranny over these states.
To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his 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 legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of
and superior to 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 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 benefits 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 in 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, burned
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 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 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 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, 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.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple,
Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual 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 McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone,
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, 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: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776
