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AMERICAN DOCUMENTS.

THE first which we introduce has ever been a standing reproach to the American States, churches, and people. Desperate indeed has been the strait and terrible the necessity to which they have been reduced when one of its imperishable truths had to be falsified and perverted so as to make it read "all (white) men are born free and equal."

There is another clause which must fearfully embarrass and perplex all loyal leaguers in the Northern States who are now exercising arbitrary and despotic power over their ancient allies, heretofore known and recognised as sovereign states in the South. This clause avows that the "governors must have the consent of the governed." How will they smooth this down, and square it with the requirements or character of a "Free Republic," so called so as to harmonise it with the incongruous elements of a military despotism?

Then there is the bill of grievances which the old colonists presented to the world and preferred against one King George the Third, his officers and ministers-a bill which must sound strangely in the ears of mankind, cause the words contained in the following document to turn to ashes on the lips of Federals and their partisans and subject them to blasting irony and scorn, since the proscriptions, usurpations, privations, hardships, and calamities, inflicted on the old colonists of England by those who sought to uphold the divine right of kings were as but the dust of the balance when compared with those which are associated with a government professing to be founded on the divine rights of men, and claiming to be the "best and freest-the most equal in its rights, just in its decisions, lenient in its measures, and aspiring in its principles to elevate the race of men that the sun ever shone upon." Could George the Third with his ministers and officers rise from the dead and stand in the presence of the Federals of the present day, or their partisans, would they not point to the reign of deso

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ation in America and its complicated woes with the finger of derision and scorn, and with terrible sarcasm exclaim, "You called us tyrants and usurpers, and the enemies of the human race. Who are you? In what character do you stand before the world? And who are responsible for those terrible calamities which have befallen your country? These are questions which would make the ears of Federals and their admirers to tingle and their cheeks to crimson with shame, if it were possible to bring them to a consciousness of their guilt, as corrupters and defilers of their great charters of freedom-as co-partners with the Southerns in the blood-cemented fabric of slavery-and as being in the past history of America, the main pillars to buttress up those vast schemes of oppression, robbery, and wrong which now they so suddenly affect to loathe and despise.

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776.

THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

WHEN, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with one another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident-that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organising its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accord

ingly, all experience hath shown 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 suffering 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 obtaiued; 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 repository 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 neutralisation of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out our sub

stance.

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

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

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

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighbouring 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:

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

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 endeavoured 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 attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts 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 of 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 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 connection between them and the state of Great Britian is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred Honour.

Then follow the names of the leading revolutionary men of the day.

The next document proclaims trumpet-tongued the sovereignty of the states of America, the federation of the Union; and defines the object of the people, through their representatives, to be not to usurp authority over, wage war with, oppress or rob each other -but to promote mutual friendship, liberty, peace, security, and prosperity on the basis of equal rights towards each state and all men-a thing utterly impossible when Washington, Jefferson, and Madison introduced the compromises into the Constitution, and a sad omen of the terrible calamities which have befallen us in America.

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