DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 



For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and alter- 

 ing, fundamentally, 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 declaring us out of his protection, 

 and waging war against us. 



He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and de- 

 stroyed 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 begun with cir- 

 cumstances 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 amongst us, and 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. 



In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the 

 most humble terms ; our repeated petitions have been answered 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 legislature to extend an 

 unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circum- 

 stances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their 

 native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them, by the ties of 

 our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably 

 interrupt our connections and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to 

 the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in 

 the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold 

 the rest of mankind, enemies in war ; in peace, friends. 



We, therefore, the representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in 

 General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for 

 the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the 

 good people of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United 

 Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States ; that 

 they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political 

 connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, 

 totally dissolved ; and that, as Free and Independent States, they have full 

 power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and 

 do all other acts and things which Independent States may of right do. And 

 for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of 

 DIVINE PROVIDENCE, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, 

 and our sacred honor. 



JOHN HANCOCK. 



