In honor of tomorrow’s celebration, I am re-reading The
Declaration of Independence, which is the point of this holiday.
I received an invitation from Hillsdale College, open to
anyone, to join them in
their pledge to read the Declaration of Independence on
July 4
th. You can of course donate to their cause, of educating
people on the founding principles, but no donation is necessary. Just read.
Usually The Declaration is printed in the
Houston Chronicle, on the editorial
page, so that’s a source if you don’t have another.
I’m providing the transcript below (including the list of
the signers, who risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor),
from the
National Archives.
I happened to come across an article this week, quoting the president
in
a speech to a group of summer interns
[see comment below], suggesting they
not celebrate the Independence Day. His speech included this:
Peer back into history and ask yourselves—Was a revolution
truly necessary? Great Britain may not have had it completely right, but they
had many things right.
Presumably he has read The Declaration, with its list of
abuses, and finds it too trivial to have led to a separation from the
oppressor. Not sure what the limit of his tolerance for oppression (or
oppressing) would be. But when I read The Declaration, I believe the founders
were justified in declaring a separation. The Revolutionary War was only
necessary because the oppressive regime refused to acquiesce without a fight,
and freedom from oppression is a just cause to fight for.
It was necessary for our founders to set up a new nation,
with new laws, to guarantee our freedoms. We already have such a nation, with
such laws. But the list of usurpation of powers is arguably more egregious now
that the list in The Declaration. I
wrote recently that what we need is not transformation,
nor reformation, but restoration.
This is a good time of year to remember what is worth
restoring and preserving. Read The Declaration. And then read The Constitution.
And marvel with me at the inspiration given to our founders.
The Declaration of Independence: A
Transcription
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
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 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 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 harrass 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:
o
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops
among us:
o
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from
punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these
States:
o
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the
world:
o
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
o
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits
of Trial by Jury:
o
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for
pretended offences
o
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:
o
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our
most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
o
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 compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny,
already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & 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 Brittish
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 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 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 Honor.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions
indicated:
Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton
Column 2
North
Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South
Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton
Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton
Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean
Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark
Column 6
New
Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode
Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New
Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton
