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 admitted 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 imme diate 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 representatives' houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused, for a long time after such dissolution, to cause others to be created, 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 endeavoured to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for the naturalisation 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 subsistence.

He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdietion foreign to our constitution, and unacknowleged by our laws; giving his consent to their pretended acts of legislation:

For quartering large bodies of 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 benefit of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond the seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighbouring 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:

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, 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 begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous

ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilised nas

tion.

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 own hands.

He has excited domestic insurrection amongst us, and has endeavoured 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 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 magnani mity; and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connexions and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and 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; and that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and that all political connexion 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 may mutu. ally pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.

JOHN HANCOCK.
WILLIAM FLOYOS.
PHILIP LIVINGSTON.
FRANCIS LEWIS.
LEWIS MORRIS.
RICHARD HORKTON.
CESAR RODNEY.
GEORGE READ.

THOMAS M. KEAT.
BENJAMIN HARRISON.
THOMAS NELSON, JUN.
FRANCIS LIGHTFOOT LEE.
CARTER BRAXTON.
JAMES WITHERSPOAL.
FRANCIS HOPKINSON.
JOHN HART.

JOSIAH BARTLETT.

WILLIAM WHIPPLE.

SAMUEL ADAMS.

ROBERT TREAT PAINE.

ELBRIDGE GERRY.

STEPHEN HOPKINS.

WILLIAM ELLERY.
ROGER SHERMAN.
SAMUEL HUNTINGTON.
WILLIAM WILLIAMS.
OLIVER WALCOTT.
MATTHEW THORNTON.

APPENDIX II.

THE RESIGNATION OF THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.

"MR. PRESIDENT,

"The great events on which my resignation depended, having at length taken place, I have now the honour of offering my sincere congratulations to Congress, and of presenting myself to them, to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the service of my country.

་་

'Happy in the confirmation of our independence and Sovereignty, and pleased with the opportunity afforded the United States, of becoming a respectable nation, I resign with satisfaction the appointment I accepted with diffidence; a diffidence in my abilities to accomplish so arduous a task, which, however, was superseded by at confidence in the rectitude of our cause, the support of the supreme power of the union, and the patronage of Heaven. The successful termination of the war has verified the most sanguine expectations; and my grati tude for the interposition of Providence, and the assis tance I have received from my countrymen, increases with every review of the momentous contest.

"While I repeat my obligations to the army in genefi ral, I should do injustice to my own feelings not to acknow ledge in this place, the peculiar services and distinguished merits of the gentlemen who have been attached to my person during the war. It was impossible the choice of confidential officers to compose my family should have been more fortunate. Permit me, Sir, to recommend in particular, those who have continued in the service to the present moment, as worthy of the favourable notice and patronage of Congress.

"I consider it as an indispensable duty, to close this last act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almightys God, and those who have the superintendence of them to his holy keeping.

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Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action, and bidding an affec tionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employ ments of public life."