DECLARATION OF INDEPENPENCE.





UNANIMOUSLY PASSED BY TIlE CONGRESS OF TIHE TIIIRTEEN UNITED
                    STATES OF AMAERICA, JULY 4, 1776.

  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 as-
sume 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 inalienable rights; that among
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these
rightsg,
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the
con-
sent of the governed; and that whenever any form of government becomes de-
structive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish
it, and
to institute a 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 sihould not be changed for light and transient causes ;
and, ac-
cordingly, 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
ab-.
solute 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 pa-
tient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which con-
strains 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 dis-
tricts of people unless these 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 fa-
tiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representa-
tive 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 an-:
nihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise, the
State re-
maining, in the meantime, exposed to all the danger 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 emigration 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.
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