Demon Lord of Confusion wrote:
Declaration of Independence of the 13 united States of America: July 4,
1776


When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people
to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with 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 unalienable 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 new government, laying its foundation on
such principles, and organizing 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 accordingly 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 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
invasions from without and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that
purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization 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 their substance.

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 offenses;

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;

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, burned 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 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 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 our 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 Britain 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 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 honor.

[Signed by] JOHN HANCOCK [President]


New Hampshire
JOSIAH BARTLETT,
WM. WHIPPLE,
MATTHEW THORNTON.

Massachusetts Bay
SAML. ADAMS,
JOHN ADAMS,
ROBT. TREAT PAINE,
ELBRIDGE GERRY

Rhode Island
STEP. HOPKINS,
WILLIAM ELLERY.

Connecticut
ROGER SHERMAN,
SAM'EL HUNTINGTON,
WM. WILLIAMS,
OLIVER WOLCOTT.

New York
WM. FLOYD,
PHIL. LIVINGSTON,
FRANS. LEWIS,
LEWIS MORRIS.

New Jersey
RICHD. STOCKTON,
JNO. WITHERSPOON,
FRAS. HOPKINSON,
JOHN HART,
ABRA. CLARK.

Pennsylvania
ROBT. MORRIS
BENJAMIN RUSH,
BENJA. FRANKLIN,
JOHN MORTON,
GEO. CLYMER,
JAS. SMITH,
GEO. TAYLOR,
JAMES WILSON,
GEO. ROSS.

Delaware
CAESAR RODNEY,
GEO. READ,
THO. M'KEAN.

Maryland
SAMUEL CHASE,
WM. PACA,
THOS. STONE,
CHARLES CARROLL of Carrollton.

Virginia
GEORGE WYTHE,
RICHARD HENRY LEE,
TH. JEFFERSON,
BENJA. HARRISON,
THS. NELSON, JR.,
FRANCIS LIGHTFOOT LEE,
CARTER BRAXTON.

North Carolina
WM. HOOPER,
JOSEPH HEWES,
JOHN PENN.

South Carolina
EDWARD RUTLEDGE,
THOS. HAYWARD, JUNR.,
THOMAS LYNCH, JUNR.,
ARTHUR MIDDLETON.

Georgia
BUTTON GWINNETT,
LYMAN HALL,
GEO. WALTON.