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.
Having thus shewn the clear right and solemn duty to do the act, the performance of which they had announced, namely, the dissolution of the political bands that had formerly connected the authors of this manifesto, and their respective constituents, with another government; provided, such a long train of abuses and usurpations on the part of this other government, as they had referred to, existed, the Declaration next proceeds to set forth what were the abuses and usurpations, the previous occurrence of which would give point and special application to their asserted self-evident truths, and so justify that act.
The catalogue of these abuses and usurpations need not be repeated here.
All men must admit, that if the facts stated therein were true, as stated, and if the general propositions affirmed were correct as affirmed, they made together a perfect demonstration of that which they were intended to establish, that is to say, of the right to throw off the government of Great Britain, by which government these abuses and usurpations had been practised. But not content with this clear demonstration of a strict right, the authors of the Declaration go on to state further:
That in every stage of these oppressions, they had petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; but that their repeated petitions had been answered only be repeated injuries. That they had also appealed to the native justice and magnanimity of their British brethren, conjuring them, by the ties of common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt their connexions and correspondence; but that they, too, had been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity—Wherefore, they were bound to acquiesce in the necessity which denounced their separation, and to hold them, as they held the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
