106 HAYS — DRAUGHT OF DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. [Ap. 1, 



* 

 executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by 



their hands. 



[He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its 

 most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant peo- 

 ple, who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into 

 slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their 

 transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of 

 infideP powers, is the warfare of the Christian^ king of Great Britain.. 

 Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought 

 & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legis- 

 lative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce : 

 and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distin- 

 guished die, he^ is now exciting those very people to rise in arms 

 among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he^ has 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 

 free 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, to build a foundation, so broad and undis- 

 guised, for tyranny over a people fostered and fixed in principles of 

 freedom.] 



Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. 

 We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their leg- 

 islature to extend [a] an uiiwarr ant able jurisdiction over [these our 

 states] 2is. 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 constituting 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 sub- 

 mission to their parliament was no part of our constitution, nor ever 

 in idea, if history maybe credited : and] we //az/<? appealed to their 



^ Underscored in original. 



