Edwardsville spectator. [volume] (Edwardsville, Ill.) 1819-1826, 1819-07-03

ofthese 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 offences:
For abolishing the free system of Eng
fish laws in a neighboring province, es-
tablishing therein an arbitrary govern
ment, and charging its boundaries, SO
as to render it at once an example and fit
instrument for introducing the same alb
solute rule into these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolish
ing our most valuable laws, and altering
fundamentally the forms Of our govern
ments:
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 ofhis protection, and
Waelng war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged
our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroy
cd the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large
armies of foreign mercenaries to COM
plete the works of death, desolation, and
tyranny, already begun with circumstan-
ces of cruelty and per6dy, scarcely par
, alleied in the most barbarous ages, and
totally unworthy the head of civilized
nation.
He has constrained our fellow citi-
zens, taken captive on the high seas, to
bear arms against their country, to be-
come the eXecutioners of their friends
and brethren, or to fall themselves BY
their hands.
He has excited domestic instructions
amongst us, and has endeavored 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 con-
ditions.
In every stage of these expressions,
we have petitioned for redress in the
most humble terms our repeated peti-
tons have been answered only by re-
peated injury. A prince whose charac-
ter is thus marked by every act which
may define tyrant, is unfit to be the
ruler Of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in atten-
tons to our British brethren. We have
warned them from time to time of at
tempts by their legislature to extend an
unwarrantable jurisdiction over US. We
have reminded them of the circumstan-
ces 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 COM
mon kindred, to disavow these usurpa-
tons, which would inevitably interrupt
our connexion and correspondence
They too have been deaf to the voice of
justice and consanguinity. We must
therefore acquiesce in the necessity
which denounces our separation, and
hold them, as we hold the rest of man
kind, 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 rec
titude 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 con-
neXion between them and the state of
Great Britain, is, and ought to be, total
ly dissolved; and that, as free and indie
pendent states, they have full power to
levy war, conclude peace, contract alli-
ances, establish commerce, and 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 Pro-
violence, We mutually pledge to each
ether our lives, our fortunes, and our
sacred honor.
s- JOHN HANCOCK, President.
CHARLES THOMSON, Secretary
The persons mentioned under the