as erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of
officers, to harass our people and eat out their substance.

11. He has kept among us in times of peace, standing armies, without the
consent of our Legislatures.

12. He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior
to, the civil power.

13. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign
to our constitutions, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent
to their acts of pretended legislation;

14. For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;

15. For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any
murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States;

16. For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;

17. For imposing taxes on us without our consent;

18. For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of a trial by jury;

19. For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses;

20. For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring
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.

21. For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and
altering, fundamentally, the forms of our governments.

22. For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves
invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

23. He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his
protection, and waging war against us.

24. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and
destroyed the lives of our people.

25. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries
to complete the works 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.

26. 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.

27. He has excited domestic insurrection among 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 condit