The Declaration Of Independence

Of the United States
of America

When, in the course of human events 
It becomes necessary 
For one people to dissolve 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 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 with their Creator
With certain unalienable rights
That among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness
That to secure these rights
Governments are 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 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 by the same object,
Evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism it is their right.
It is their duty to throw off their government
And to provide new guards for their future security
Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessecity 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 estabilshment
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 forgibben his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained, And when suspended: he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws,
For the accomodation of large districts of people (unless those people would relinquish the right to representation in the legistlature, a right, inestimable to them and forimidable to tyrants only).

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomoftable and distant from the depository of their public records; for the “sole purpose” of fatiguing them intoi compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of people.
He has refused, for a long time after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative, 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 withut, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of thees Statesl for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of froeigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of hands.
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 them 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, the 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 legislatation,
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should comit on their 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 fre system of English, “laws” in a neighboring province
And enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it as one, “an example” and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these “colonies.”
For taking awway our charters, abolishing our mast 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 dlacring 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 curcmstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
Be bas constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethen, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabited of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known ru le of warfare is undistinguished, destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions, we have all petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeate 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 peole.
Nor have we have been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time, of attempts by their legislature to extend and 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 magnaminity and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondences. 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 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 rectitutde of our intentions,
Do, in the name.
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 all that all political onnection 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 protection of Divine Providence we mutually pledge to each other our lives our fortunes and our sacred honor.