His Declaration

His Fortunes and his Sacred Honor, he pledges to each of you mutually his Life, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, and for the support of his Declaration. And to do all other Acts and Things which Michael may of right do, establish Non-Commercial Activities, contract Alliances and conclude Peace. He has full Power to levy War! And that as a Free and Independent Prince is; and ought to be. Totally dissolved! That all political connection between him and any foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate; that these United States are Absolved from all Allegiance to him, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that these United States are. Solemnly publish and declare! And by Authority of the good People of these United States, in the Name, do, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of his intentions; Assembled, in General Congress, the Representatives of the United States of America. Therefore, his?

In Peace Friends, Enemies in War, as he holds the rest of mankind. And hold them! Which denounces his Separation? Acquiesce in the necessity. Therefore, he must. You too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity, would inevitably interrupt his connections and correspondence, and he has conjured you by the ties of your common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, he has appealed to your native justice and magnanimity. He has reminded you of the circumstances of your emigration and settlement here. He has warned you from time to time of attempts by your legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over you. Nor has he been wanting in attentions to his American brethren.

Is unfit to be the Ruler of a Free People! A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, his repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury: In every stage of these Oppressions he has Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms.

Sexes and conditions, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages. Whose known rule of warfare? The merciless Indian Savages? He has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of your frontiers, and has excited domestic insurrections amongst you.

Or to fall himself by your Hands? To become the executioner of your friends and Brethren? You have constrained your fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Countries!

And totally unworthy he is as the Head of a civilized nation, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy; scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages. Desolation and tyranny! You are at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death.

You have destroyed the lives of your people, burnt your towns, ravaged your Coasts, and have plundered your seas.

By declaring him out of your Protection and waging War against him, you have abdicated Government here.

And declaring yourselves invested with power to legislate for him in all cases whatsoever?

For suspending your own Legislatures, and altering fundamentally the Forms of your Governments: Abolishing your most valuable Laws.

For taking away your Charters, and enlarging their Boundaries so as to render them at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these United States: Establishing therein an Arbitrary Government.

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province: For transporting yourselves beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.

Of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For depriving yourselves in many cases, for imposing taxes on yourselves without his Consent.

For cutting off his Trade with all parts of the world, from punishment for any Murders which you should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: By a mock Trial, for protecting you.

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops amongst him: Giving his Assent to your Acts of pretended Legislation, and unacknowledged by your laws, you have combined with others to subject him to a jurisdiction foreign to your constitution.

You have affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

Standing Armies without the Consent of his legislatures? In times of peace, he has kept amongst you.

And eat out your substance; you sent hither swarms of Officers to harass his people. He has erected a multitude of New Offices.

And the amount and payment of your salaries: For the tenure of their offices, he has made Judges dependent on your Will alone.

By refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers, you have obstructed the Administration of Justice.

And raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands, refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, for that purpose, obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners, you have endeavoured to prevent the population of these States.

And convulsions within, the States remaining in the mean-time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; incapable of Annihilation. Whereby the Legislative powers, to cause others to be elected after such dissolutions? You have refused for a long time.

For opposing with manly firmness your invasions on the rights of the people: you have dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly.

For the sole purpose of fatiguing him into compliance with your measures, and distant from the depository of your public Records; uncomfortable: He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual.

A right inestimable to you and formidable to tyrants only! Unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature? You have refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people.

You have utterly neglected to attend to them, and when so suspended, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained, &c.: you have forbidden your Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance.

The most wholesome and necessary for the public good, you have refused his Assent to Laws.

Let Facts be submitted to a candid world, to prove this. All having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States, the current history, accordingly all experience hath shewn of repeated injuries and usurpations, and such is now the necessity which constrains him to alter these former Systems of Government. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these States.-- And to provide new Guards for their future security, to throw off such Government, it is his duty, it is your right, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce him under absolute Despotism. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, than to right yourselves by abolishing the forms to which you are accustomed, while evils are sufferable? That mankind are more disposed to suffer! And accordingly all experience hath shewn, and will dictate, that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; indeed. Prudence! As to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, it is the Right of his People to alter or to abolish it, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends--deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, Governments are instituted among Men!--That to secure these rights, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that all men are created equal, he holds these truths to be self-evident.

A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that he should declare the causes which impel him to the separation, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle him, and to assume among the powers of the earth, it becomes necessary for one to dissolve the political bands which have connected him with another. When in the Course of human events.