When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political 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 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 separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers 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 to 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
the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
despotism, 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 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 establishment 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 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 utterly
neglected 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 called together legislative bodies at places unusual
uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public
records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with
his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing,
with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, 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 mean time, exposed to all the dangers of
invasions 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 obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his
assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
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 us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the
consent of our legislatures.
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 legislation:
[Signed by]
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 neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into t
hese 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 declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
JOHN HANCOCK [President]
[and fifty-five others]