Evening star., 1934-05-10

!, New Hampshire in Nopem5er Of that year.
to 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;
Forlmposing taxes on us without our consent;
For depriving US, in many cases, Of the bene-
fits of trial by jury;
For Transporting US beyond seas to be tried
for pretended ofenses;
For abolishing the free system Of English
laws in a neighbouring province, establishing
therein an arbitrary government, and enlarg-
ing its boundaries, so as to render it at once an
example and fit instrument for introducing the
same absolute rule into these colonies;
For taking away our charters, abolishing our
most valuable laws, and altering, ,fundamen-
tally, the forms of our governments;
For suspending our own Legislatures, and de-
clarlng themselves invested with power to
legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdcated government here by de-
claring US out Of his protection, and wagng
war against US.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our
coasts, burnt our towns and DESTROYED the
lives of our people.
He is at this time Transporting large armies
of foreign mercenaries to compleat the works
of death, desolaton, and tyranny already be-
gun, with circumstances of cruelty and perhdy
scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages,
and totally unworthy the head Of civilized
nation.
He has constrained our fellow-citizens,
taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms
against their country, to become the execu-
toners of their friends and brethren, or to fall
themselves by their hands.
Hehas excited domestic instructions amongst
us, and sendeavoured to bring on the inhabi-
tants of our frontiers the merciless Indian saw
ages, whose known rule Of warfare is an undis-
tinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and
conditions.
In every stage Of these expressions we have
petltloned for redress in the most humble
terms; our repeated petitions have been an
swered only by repeated injury. A prince whose
character is thus marked by every act which
may define tyrant is unfit to be the ruler Of
free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attentions to
our British brethren. We have warned them,
from time to time, Of attempts by their legis-
lature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction
over us. We have reminded them of the circum-
stances 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 dsavow
these usurpatons, which would inevitably in
terrupt our connections and correspondence.
They, too, have been deaf to the voice of JUS
tice and of consanguinty. 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 Con-
gress assembled, appealing to the Supreme
Judge Of the world for the recttude Of our in
tentions, do, in the name and by 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 inde-
pendent 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 inde-
pendent States, they have full power to levy
war, conclude peace, contract alliances, estab-
lish commerce, and to do all other acts and
things which independent States may Of right
do. And for the support of this declaration,
with firm reliance on the protection Of Divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other
our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.