Author: Jessica Marie Marchlik
Last saved by: Paul D. Amer
Company: Virginia Tech

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one 
   people to dissolve the political bonds 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.

   We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
   equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
   rights, that among these are life, liberty and 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 to these ends, it is
   the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
   government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
   powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
   safety and happiness.  Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments
   long established should not be changed for light and 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 and usurpations, 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, and to provide new
   guards for their future security.  Such has been the patient sufferance
   of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them
   to alter their former systems 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 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.

   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, 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; refusing
   to pass others to encourage their migration hither,  and raising the
   conditions of new appropriations of lands.

   He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent 
   to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

   He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of
   their offices, and the amount and payment of their 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 times of peace, standing armies without the
   consent of our legislature.

   He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to
   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 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 offenses:

   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 in these colonies:

   For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and
   altering fundamentally the forms 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 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 begun
   with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the
   most barbarous ages, and totaly unworth 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 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
   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 attention 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.  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 levey war, conclude
   peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to 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.