He has affected to render the military inde pendent of, and superior to. the civil power.
He has combined. with others, to subject its 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 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 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 neighlwring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government. and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an ex ample and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering, fundamentally, the powers of our governments: For suspending our own legislatures, and de claring themselves invested with power to legis late for us in all cases whatsoever.
Ire has abdicated government here, by de claring. us out of his protection. and waging war against us.
lie has plundered our seas. ravaged our harnt 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 heroin, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized ion.
l le has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to hear 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 among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabit ants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian sav ages, whose known rule of warfare is an undis tinguished 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.
or have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts made by their legis lature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have nanimled 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 disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connection and correspondence. They, too. have been deaf to the voice of justice and con sanguinity. 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 independent Srlates; 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 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 prob-ction of Divine Provi dence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortwws, and our sacred tumor.