                      Declaration of Independence

                   [Adopted in Congress 4 July 1776]



   The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

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 of 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 of 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 levey 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.
