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As it probably read when Jefferson submitted it for corrections
In the original text there are some changes: these are indicated by [ ..... ]. Most of these changes seem to be by Jefferson himself, but some of these are in a handwriting that resembles that of Adams.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the equal and independent station to which the laws of nature and of 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 change
We hold these truths to be [sacred and undeniable] selfevident, that all men
are created
equal and independent; that from that equal creation they derive in
rights inherent and inalienables, among which are the preservation
of life, and liberty and the pursuit of happiness;
that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that
whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is
the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing
it's
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 shewn 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, begun at a distinguished period,
and
pursuing invariably the same object
evinces a design to [subject] reduce them to arbitrary power, it is their
right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new
guards for their future security. --
Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and
such is now
the necessity which constrains them to expunge their former systems of
government. the history of his present majesty is a history
of unremitting injuries and usurpations, among which no fact stands
single or solitary to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest,
all of which have in direct object the
establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. to prove this, let
facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we
pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary
for the public good:
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and
pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent
should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has neglected utterly to
attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large
districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right of
representation [in the legislature], a right inestimable to them and
formidable to tyrants only:
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with
manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
[he has dissolved]he has refused for a long space of
time,
to cause others
to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, 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
without, and convulsions within:
he has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that
purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing
to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the
conditions of new appropriations of lands:
he has suffered the administration of justice totally to
cease in some of these colonies, refusing his assent
to laws for establishing judiciary powers:
he has made our judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of
their offices, and the amount of their salaries.
he has erected a multitude of new offices by a
self-assumed
power, and sent hither swarms of
officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
he has kept among us, in times of peace, standing
armies and
ships of war:
he has affected to render the military, independent of and superior to
civil power:
he has combined with others to subject us to a
jurisdiction foreign to
our constitutions, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to
their pretended acts of 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 imposing taxes on us without our consent;
for depriving us of the benefits of trial by jury;
for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended
offenses;
for taking away our charters, 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, withdrawing his governors,
and declaring us out of his alegiance and
protection;
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, desolation and tyranny, already begun
with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy
unworthy the head of a civilized
nation:
he 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 conditions of existence:
he has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow citizens
with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property:
he has waged cruel war
against human nature itself, violating it's
most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant
people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into
slavery in another hemispere, or to incure miserable death in their
transportation hither. this piratical warfare, the opprobium of
infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of
Great Britain. [determined to keep open a market where MEN should be
bought and sold,] he has prostituted his negative for suppressing
every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable
commerce [determining to keep open a market where MEN should be
bought and sold]: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no
fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to
rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he
had deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also
obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the
liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to
commit against the lives of another.
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
people who mean to be free. future ages will scarce believe that
the hardiness of one man, adventured within the short compass of
twelve years only, on so many acts of tyranny without a mask, over
a people fostered and fixed in principles of liberty.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British
brethren. we
have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to
extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over these our states. we have reminded
them
of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here, no one
of which could warrant so strange a pretension: that these were
effected at the expence of our own blood and treasure, unassisted
by the wealth or the strength of Great Britain: that in constituing
indeed our several forms of government, we had adopted one common
king, thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league and amity
with them: but that submission to their parliament was no part of
our constitution, nor ever in idea, if history may be credited: and
we appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, as well as to
the ties of our common kindred to disavow these
usurpations, which were likely to interrupt our correspondence and
connections.
they too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of
consanguinity, and when occasions have been given them, by the
regular course of their laws, of removing from their councils the
disturbers of our harmony, they have by their free election
re-established them in power. at this very time too they are
permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of
our common blood, but Scotch and foreign mercenaries to invade and
deluge us in blood. these facts have given the last stab to
agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce forever
these unfeeling brethren.
We must endeavor to forget our former love for them,
and hold them, as we hold the rest of
mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. we might have been a
free and a great people together; but a communication of grandeur
and of freedom it seems is below their dignity. be it so, since
they will have it: the road to [glory and] happiness [and to glory]
is open to us too; we will climb it apart from them [in a seperate
state] and acquiesce in the necessity which denounces [pronounces][
our [everlasting Adieu!] eternal separation!
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States
of America, in
General Congress, assembled do , in the name, and by the
authority of the good people of these states, reject and renounce
the allegiance and subjection to the kinds of Great Britain and all
others whe may herafter claim by, through, or under them; we
utterly dissolve and break off all political connection which may
have heretofore subsisted between us and the people or parliament
of Great Britain; and finally we do assert and declare these
colonies to be free and independent states, and that as free and
independent states
they shall herafter 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 we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes
and our sacred honor.
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