gislature--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 right 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 mean time, exposed to all the danger 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 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 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 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 law 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:

For taking away our cha