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- The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Declaration of Independence
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- **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
- **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
- *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
- Title: The Declaration of Independence
- Release Date: December, 1971 [EBook #1]
- [Most recently updated: November 25, 2004]
- Edition: 12
- Language: English
- Character set encoding: ASCII
- ***
- The United States Declaration of Independence was the first Etext
- released by Project Gutenberg, early in 1971. The title was stored
- in an emailed instruction set which required a tape or diskpack be
- hand mounted for retrieval. The diskpack was the sie of a large
- cake in a cake carrier, cost $1500, and contained 5 megabytes, of
- which this file took 1-2%. Two tape backups were kept plus one on
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- This file was never copyrighted, Sharewared, etc., and is thus for
- all to use and copy in any manner they choose. Please feel free to
- make your own edition using this as a base.
- In my research for creating this transcription of our first Etext,
- I have come across enough discrepancies [even within that official
- documentation provided by the United States] to conclude that even
- "facsimiles" of the Declaration of Indendence will NOT going to be
- all the same as the original, nor of other "facsimiles." There is
- a plethora of variations in capitaliation, punctuation, and, even
- where names appear on the documents [which names I have left out].
- The resulting document has several misspellings removed from those
- parchment "facsimiles" I used back in 1971, and which I should not
- be able to easily find at this time, including "Brittain."
- [JT, Apr 05: "Brittish", however, is spelled as in the original.]
- **The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Declaration of Independence**
- The Declaration of Independence of The United States of America
- IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
- The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
- When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for
- one people to dissolve the political bands 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 of 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 organiing
- 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 mean time 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 of Naturaliation 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 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 compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun
- with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the
- most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the Head of a civilied nation.
- He has constrained our fellow Citiens 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
- 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 Brittish 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. They too have been
- deaf to the voice of justice and of 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;
- 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
- levy 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.
- ***
- End of The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Declaration of Independence
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