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.
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 form 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 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. 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
