t be changed for light and transient causes; and
accordingly all experience has 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,
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
conditions of new appropriation of lands. He has obstructed the
administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws establishing
judiciary powers.
|