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He has waged cruel war against human nature itself; violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him; captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce; and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.]

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 injuries. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a [ ] people [who mean to be free. Future ages will scarcely believe that the hardiness of one man adven

tured, within the short compass of twelve years only, to lay a foundation so broad and undisguised for tyranny over a people fostered and fixed in principles of freedom.]

an unwarrantable

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 [a] jurisdic tion over [these our States.] We have re- us minded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here, [no one of which could warrant so strange a pretension; that these were effected at the expense of our own blood and treasure, unassisted by the wealth or strength of Great Britain: that in constituting indeed our several forms of government, we had adopted one common king, thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league and amity with them: but that submission to their Parliament was no part of our Constitution, nor ever in idea, if history may be credited: and] we [ ] appealed to have their native justice and magnanimity [as and we have well as to] the ties of our common kin-by dred to disavow these usurpations which [were likely to] interrupt our connection would ineviand correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. [, and when occasions have been given them, by the regular course of their laws, of removing from their councils the disturbers of our harmony they have, by their free election, re-established them in VOL. I.-2*

conjured them

tably

We must therefore

power. At this very time too, they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch and foreign mercenaries to invade and destroy us. These facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce for ever these unfeeling brethren. We must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and to hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. We might have been a free and a great people together; but a communication of grandeur and of freedom, it seems, is below their dignity. Be it so since they will have it. The road to happiness and to glory is open to us We will tread it apart from them, and] [] acquiesce in the necessity which de

Loo.

and hold them nounces our [eternal] separation [ ]!

as we hold the

rest of man

kind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We therefore the Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled appealing to the Supreme | do, in the name and by the Judge of the world for authority of the good peothe rectitude of our inten-ple of these [States, reject tions, 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

and renounce all allegiance and subjection to the Kings of Great Britain and all others who may hereafter claim by, through, or under them; we utterly dissolve

ought to be free and inde- | all political connection which

pendent States; that they
are absolved from all al-
legiance to the British
Crown, and that all politi-
cal connection between
them and the State of
Great Britain is, and ought independent States,]
to be totally dissolved;

may heretofore have sub-
sisted between us, and the
people or Parliament of
Great Britain; and finally
we do assert and declare
these Colonies to be free and

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, [ ] we mutually pledge to each other our lives, the protection our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

with a firm

reliance on

of Divine Providence.

On Friday, the twelfth of July, the committee appointed to draw the articles of confederation reported them, and on the twenty-second, the House resolved themselves into a committee to take them into consideration. On the thirtieth and thirty-first of that month, and the first of the ensuing, those articles were debated which determined the proportion or quota of money which each State should furnish to the common treasury, and the manner of voting in Congress. The first of these articles was expressed in the original draught in these words:

'ARTICLE XI. All charges of war and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common

defence, or general welfare, and allowed by the United States assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several Colonies in proportion to the number of inhabitants of every age, sex and quality, except Indians not paying taxes, in each Colony, a true account of which, distinguishing the white inhabitants, shall be triennially taken and transmitted to the Assembly of the United States.'

Mr. Chase moved, that the quotas should be paid, not by the number of inhabitants of every condition but by that of the 'white inhabitants.' He admitted that taxation should be always in proportion to property; that this was in theory the true rule, but that from a variety of difficulties it was a rule which could never be adopted in practice. The value of the property in every State could never be estimated justly and equally. Some other measure for the wealth of the State must therefore be devised, some standard referred to which would be more simple. He considered the number of inhabitants as a tolerably good criterion of property, and that this might always be obtained. He therefore thought it the best mode we could adopt, with one exception only. He observed that negroes are property, and as such cannot be distinguished from the lands or personalities held in those States where there are few slaves. That the surplus of profit which a Northern farmer is able to lay by, he invests in cattle, horses, &c.; whereas, a Southern farmer lays out that same surplus in slaves. There is no more reason therefore for taxing the Southern States on the farmer's head and on his slave's head, than the Northern ones on their

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