and usurpations, having
for their direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over
America. The sins of the monarch--for it was against the king himself
that congress chiefly aimed their blows--were set forth in eighteen
separate clauses, and it must be confessed that if the monarch was so
great a sinner as he was represented to be in these clauses, then the
summing up of the act of independence was justifiable. This summing up
declared,--"That a prince marked by every act which may define a tyrant,
is unfit to be the ruler of a free people: consequently, congress,
in the name and by the authority of the good people of America,
had solemnly published and declared that the colonies were free and
independent states, absolved from allegiance to the British crown; that
all political connexion between them and Great Britain was broken;
and they, as free and independent states, had full power to levy war,
conclude peace, contract alliances, and establish commerce." But though
the people of England were not calumniated by congress in such bold
and unwarrantable language as their monarch, they nevertheless were
condemned by the act of independence. A clause in it with reference
to the British people, reads thus:--"Nor have we been wanting in
attentions 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 an
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 those usurpations which interrupted our connexion
and correspondence. But they have been deaf to the voice of justice
and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which
pronounces 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 intentional
do, in the name and by the 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 states; that they
are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all
political connexion between them and the state of Great Britain is and
ought to