estors in like cases have
usually done, for asserting and vindicating their rights and liberties,
DECLARE, that the inhabitants of the English colonies in North America,
by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English
Constitution, and the several charters or compacts, have the following
rights:

"Resolved, N. C. D. 1st, That they are entitled to life, liberty, and
property; and they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever a
right to dispose of either without their consent.

"Resolved, N. C. D. 2nd, That our ancestors, who first settled these
colonies, were, at the time of their emigration from the mother country,
entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free and
natural-born subjects within the realm of England.

"Resolved, N. C. D. 3rd, That by such emigration they by no means
forfeited, surrendered, or lost any of those rights, but that they were,
and their descendants now are, entitled to the exercise and enjoyment of
all such of them as their local and other circumstances enabled them to
exercise and enjoy.

"Resolved, 4th, That the foundation of English liberty and of all free
government is a right in their people to participate in their
Legislative Council; and as the English colonists are not represented,
and from their local and other circumstances cannot properly be
represented in the British Parliament, they are entitled to a free and
exclusive power of legislation in their several Provincial Legislatures,
where their right of representation can alone be preserved, in all cases
of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their
Sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed.
But from the necessity of the case, and a regard to the mutual interest
of both countries, we cheerfully consent to the operation of such Acts
of the British Parliament as are _bona fide_ restrained to the
regulation of our external commerce, for the purpose of securing the
commercial advantages of the whole empire to the mother country, and the
commercial benefits of its respective members; excluding every idea of
taxation, internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects in
America without their consent.

"Resolved, N. C. D. 5th, That the respective colonies are entitled to
the common law of England, and more especially to the great and
inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage,
according to the course of that law