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
complete the work of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun, with
circumstances of cruelty and 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 endeavored 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 British brethren. We have
warned them, from time to time, of attempts made 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 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 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