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
for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass
others to encourage their migrations 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 harrass 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 the Head of a civilized nation.
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
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.
News flash: we were never really freed from the British Monarchy.