Declare Yourself Free

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them 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, which among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To oppress these rights, governments have been instituted among men, deriving their powers out of the fear of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. 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 roads for their future. Such has been the patient sufferance of these people; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present Government is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these people. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. They have refused assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. They have refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. They have 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 their measures. They have dissolved laws, to enact oppressive invasions on the rights of the people. They have has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. They have has made judges dependent on their will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. They have combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving assent to their acts of pretended legislation. For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of a fair trial. For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses. For suspending our own legislatures and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. 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. Governments whose characters are thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant unfit for a free people.