little tender under those censures; for tho' their people have very
few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers

of them to others. The debates having taken up the greater parts of
the 2d 3d & 4th days of July were, in the evening of the last, closed

the declaration was reported by the commee, agreed to by the house
and signed by every member present except Mr. Dickinson. As the

sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what
they reject also, I will state the form of the declaration as

originally reported. The parts struck out by Congress shall be
distinguished by a black line drawn under them; & those inserted by

them shall be placed in the margin or in a concurrent column.
A Declaration by the Representatives of the

United States of America, in General
Congress Assembled.

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 &
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 *inherent

and* [certain] inalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, & the pursuit of happiness: that to secure these rights,

governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government

becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to
alter or abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it's

foundation on such principles, & organizing it's powers in such form,
as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness.

Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should
not be changed for light & transient causes; and accordingly 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
& usurpations *begun at a distinguished period and* pursuing

invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under
absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off

such government, & to provide new guards for their future security.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; & such is now

the necessity which constrains them to *expunge* [alter] their former
systems of government. The history of the present king of Great

Britain is a history of *unremitting* [repeated] injuries &
usurpations, *among which appears no solitary fact to contradict the

uniform tenor of the rest but all have* [all having] in direct object
the establishment of an absolutetyranny over these states. To prove

this let facts be submitted to a candid world *for the truth of which
we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.*

He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome &
necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate &
pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his

assent should be obtained; & when so suspended, he has utterly
neglected to attend to them.

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, & 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 compliance with
his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly" target="_blank" title="ad.反复地；再三地">repeatedly *&
continually* 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 & 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 migrations
hither, & raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has *suffered* [obstructed] the administration of justice
*totally to cease in some of these states* [by] refusing his [assent

to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made *our* judges dependant on his will alone, for the

tenure of their offices, & the amount & paiment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices *by a self assumed

power* and sent hither swarms of new officers to harass our people
and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies *and
ships of war* without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the military independant of, &
superior to the civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction
foreign to our constitutions & 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 for 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 consent; for
depriving us [ ] [in many cases] of the benefits of trial by jury;

for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences;
for abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring

province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging
it's boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit

instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these *states*
[colonies]; for taking away our charters, abolishing our most

valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our
governments; for suspending our own legislatures, & declaring

themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases
whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here *withdrawing his governors,
and declaring us out of his allegiance & protection*. [by declaring

us out of his protection, and waging war against us.]
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns,

& destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign

mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation & tyranny
already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy [ ] [scarcely

paralleled in the most barbarous ages, & 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 & brethren, or to fall themselves by
their hands.

He has [excited domesticinsurrection among us, & 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, & conditions *of existence.*

*He has incited treasonable insurrections of our
fellow-citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture & confiscation of

our property.*
*He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating

it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a
distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them

into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in
their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobium

of INFIDEL 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
legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable

commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of
distinguished 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 on whom he also obtruded them: thus