On this page is a complete copy of the Declaration of Independence with some
sections that we have
highlighted to note that they are under attack in America.
Comments will come later.
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.
To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
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He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome
and necessary for the public good.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for
opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the
people.
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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.
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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.
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He has obstructed the administration of justice, by
refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
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He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for
the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their
salaries.
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He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent
hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their
substance.
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He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing
armies, without the consent of our legislatures.
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He has affected to render the military independent of,
and superior to, the civil power.
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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:
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For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;
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For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment
for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these
states;
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For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;
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For imposing taxes on us without our consent;
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For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of
trial by jury;
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For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for
pretended offenses;
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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 these colonies;
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For taking away our charters, abolishing our most
valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;
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For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring
themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases
whatsoever.
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He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out
of his protection and waging war against us.
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He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned
our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
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He is at this time transporting large armies of
foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and
tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely
paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of
a civilized nation.
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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.
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He has excited domestic insurrection among 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.
Nor have we been wanting in our 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 circumstances 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.