Perth Amboy evening news., 1919-07-03
Declaration of independence
: IN CONGRESS, JULY A, 1776,

He has combined with others to subject us to a
Jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions, and un-
acknowledged by our laws; giving bis assent to
their acts Of pretended legislation
For q~uartering large bodies cf armed troops among
us;
For protecting them, by a mock trial, from pun
ishment for any murders which they should COM
NIT on the inhabitants of these States;
For cutting of 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 English laws
in a neighborfng province, establishing therein an
arbitrary government, and charging Its boundaries,
so as to render it at once an example and fit in
strument for Introducing the same absolute rule
into 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 declar-
ing 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 p%lundered 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 cir
cumstances of cruelty and peridy scarcely paralleled
IN the most DArDdrOuS ages, anu LOtaly unworthy
the head Of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken cap
tive 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 Instruction among US,
and has endeavored to bring on the Inhabitants of
our frontiers the merciless Indian savages. whose
known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruc-
tion Of all ages, sexes, and conditions.
In every stage of these expressions we have petit
toned for redress in the most humble terms; our
repeated petitions have been answered only by re-
peated 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 our attentions to
our British brethren. We have warned them, from
time to time, of attempts by their legislature to ex-
tend 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 kin
bred, to disavow these usurpations, which would in
evitably interrupt our connections and correspond
ence. They, too. have been deaf to the voice of
justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore, ac-
quiesee in the necessity which denounces our separa-
tion, 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
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 in
dependent 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 al
liances, 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 Provi-
dence, we mutually pledge to each other our ,lives,
our fortunes, and our sacred honor.