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 shewn, 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 for Naturalization
of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations
hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.--He
has obstru