riably the same object, evinces a defign to reduce them under abfolute despotifm, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off fuch government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the neceffity which constrains then to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present king of Great-Britain is a history of repeated injuries and ufurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an abfolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be fubmitted 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 preffing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his afsent should be obtained; and when fo 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 legiflature, 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 fole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has diffolved representative houses repeatedly, for oppofing with manly firmness his invafions on the rights of the people. He has refused, for a long time after such diffolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercife; the state remaining in the mean time exposed to all the danger of invasion from without, and convulfions within. 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. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refufing 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 fent hither fwarms of officers to harrass our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legiflatures. He has affected to render the military independent of, and fuperior to, the civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and un-acknowledged by our laws; giving his affent to their acts of pretended legiflation : 3 : For J 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 depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury : fences: 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 fame absolute rule into these colonies : For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments: For fufpending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cafes whatsoever. He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us. He has plundered our feas, ravaged our coafts, 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, defolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumftances 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 feas, 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 infurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian favages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished deftruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. In every stage of these oppreffions 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 to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts made by their legiflature 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 ufurpations, which would inevitably - interrupt our connections and correspondence. They, too, have been B2 been deaf to the voice of justice and confanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiefce in the neceffity which denounces our feparation, 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 affembled, 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 abfolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of GreatBritain 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 farm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our facred honour. JOHN HANCOCK. NEW-HAMPSHIRE, MASSACHUSETTS-BAY, RHODE-ISLAND, &c. CONNECTICUT, NEW-YORK, NEW-JERSEY, { Fofiah Bartlett, PENNSYLVANIA, 1 PENNSYLVANIA, DELAWARE, MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, NORTH-CAROLINA, SOUTH-CAROLINA, GEORGIA, { Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, William Hooper, Edward Rutledge, ARTICLES ICLES ART OF CONFEDERATION AND PERPETUAL UNION BETWEEN The States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts-Bay, Rhode-Island, Article I. HE stile of this confederacy shall be, T States of America." "United Art. II. Each state retains its fovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation exprefsly delegated to the united states in congress affembled. Art. III. The faid states hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defence, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to affist each other against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, fovereignty, trade, or any other pretence whatever. Art. IV. The better to fecure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different states in this union, the free inhabitants of each of these, states, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several states; and the people of each state shall have free ingress and regress to and from any other state, and shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions, and restrictions, as the inhabitants thereof respectively, provided that fuch restrictions shall not extend so far as to prevent the removal of property imported into any state to any other state of which the owner is an inhabitant; provided also that no impofition, duties, or restriction, shall be laid by any ftate on the property of the united states, or either of them. If any perfon guilty of or charged with treason, felony, or other high mildemeanour in any ftate, shall flee from justice, and be found in any of the united states, he shall, upon demand of the governor or executive power of the state from which he fled, be delivered 1 |