DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of North America, in Congress assembled on the 4th of July, 1776, in the hall of the State house of Pennsylvania, in the city of Philadelphia.

SPECIFICATION I.

"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds 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.

SPECIFICATION II.

"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 forms, 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.

SPECIFICATION III.

"He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

SPECIFICATION IV.

"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.

SPECIFICATION V.

"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.

SPECIFICATION VI.

"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.

SPECIFICATION VII.

"He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.

SPECIFICATION VIII.

"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 mean time, exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

SPECIFICATION IX.

"He has endeavoured 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, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

SPECIFICATION X.

"He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

SPECIFICATION XI.

"He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

SPECIFICATION XII.

"He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers, to harass our people, and to eat out their substance.

SPECIFICATION XIII.

"He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.

SPECIFICATION XIV.

"He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.

SPECIFICATION XV.

"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:

SPECIFICATION XVI.

"For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

SPECIFICATION XVII.

"For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

SPECIFICATION XVIII.

"For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

SPECIFICATION XIX.

"For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences:

SPECIFICATION XX.

"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:

SPECIFICATION XXI.

"For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering, fundamentally, the forms of our governments:

SPECIFICATION XXII.

"For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

SPECIFICATION XXIII.

"He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.

SPECIFICATION XXIV.

"He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

SPECIFICATION XXV.

"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.

SPECIFICATION XXVI.

"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.

SPECIFICATION XXVII.

"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, sexes, and conditions.

SPECIFICATION XXVIII.

"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.

SPECIFICATION XXIX.

"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 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 connexions 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.

SPECIFICATION XXX.

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