THE CENTURY BOOK OF FACTS. 



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 ether laws for the 

 accommodation of large districts of people, un- 

 less these people would relinquish the right of 

 representation in the legislature a right ines- 

 timable 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 com- 

 pliance with his measures. 



He has dissolved representative houses re- 

 peatedly, 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 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, re- 

 fusing to pass others to encourage their migra- 

 tion hither, and raising conditions of new ap- 

 propriations of lands. 



He has obstructed the administration of 

 justice, by refusing his assent to laws establish- 

 ing judiciary powers. 



He has made judges dependent on his will 

 alone for the tenure of their offices, and the 

 amount and payment of the.ir 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 tinges of peace, 

 standing armies, without the consent of our 

 legislatures. 



He has affected to render the military in- 

 dependent 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, 



For quartering large bodies of armed troops 

 among us : 



For protecting them, by a mock trial, from 

 punishment from 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 con- 

 sent : 



For depriving us, in many cases, of the 

 benefits of trial by jury : 



For transporting us beyond the seas to be 

 tried for pretended offenses : 



For abolishing the free system of English 

 lafas in a neighboring province, establishing 

 therein an arbitrary government, and enlarg- 

 ing its boundaries, so as to render it at once an 

 example and fit instrument for introducing the 

 same absolute rule into these colonies : 



For taking away our charters, abolishing 

 our most valuable laws, and altering, funda- 

 mentally, the powers 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 de- 

 claring us out of his protection, and waging 

 war against us. 



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 complete the works 

 of death, desolation and tyranny, already be- 

 gun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy 

 scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, 

 and totally unworthy the head of a civilized 

 nation. 



He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken 

 captive on the high seas, to bear arms against 

 their country, to become the executioners of 

 their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves 

 by their hands. 



He has excited domestic insurrections among 

 us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabi- 

 tants of our frontiers the merciless Indian 

 savages, whose known rule of warfare is an 

 undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, 

 and conditions. 



In every stage of these oppressions we have 

 petitioned for redress in the most humble 

 terms ; our repeated petitions have been an- 

 swered 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. 



Nor have we been wanting in attentions to 

 our British brethren. We have warned them, 

 from time to time, of attempts by their legis- 

 lature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction 

 over us. We have reminded them of the cir- 



