ARTICLE VIL The ratification of the conventions of nine states, shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution, between the states so ratifying the same. Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the states present, the seventeenth day of September, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America, the twelfth. In witness whereof, we have hereunto subscribed our names. The Constitution, although formed in 1787, was not adopted until 1788, and did not commence its operations until 1789. The number of delegates chosen to this convention was sixty-five, of whom ten did not attend, and sixteen refused to sign the Constitution. The following thirty-nine signed the Constitution: New Hampshire -John Langdon, Nicholas Gelman. Connecticut.-William Samuel Johnson, Roger Sherman. New Jersey.-William Livingston, David Brearley, William Paterson, Jonathan Dayton. Pennsylvania.- Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Mifflin, Robert Morris, George Clymer, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Jared Ingersoll, James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris. Delaware.--George Read, Gunning Bedford, jr., John Dickinson, Richard Bassett, Jacob Broom. Maryland-James M'Henry, Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, Daniel Carroll. Virginia.-John Blair, James Madison, jr. North Carolina.-William Blount, Richard Dobbs Spaight, Hugh Williamson. South Carolina. John Rutledge, Charles C. Pinkney, Charles Pinkney, Pierce Butler. Georgia.-William Few, Abraham Baldwin. WILLIAM JACKSON, Secretary. GEORGE WASHINGTON, President. AMENDMENTS To the Constitution of the United States, ratified according to the Provisions of the Fifth Article of the foregoing Constitution. ART. L-Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the rights of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. ART. II.-A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. ART. III.-No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. ART. IV. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. ART. V.-No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service, in time of war, or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 687 the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled, in any criminal case, to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. ART. VI. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence. ART. VII.-In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact, tried by jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. ART. VIII-Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. ART. IX. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. ART. X.-The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. ART. XI-The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States, by citizens of another state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state. ART. XII.-The electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot, for president and vice-president, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name, in their ballots, the person voted for as president, and, in distinct ballots, the person voted for as vice-president; and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as president, and of all persons voted for as vice-president, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit, sealed, to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the president of the senate. The president of the senate shall, in the presence of the senate and house of representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted. The person having the greatest number of votes for president, shall be the president, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if no person have such a majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers, not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as president, the house of representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the president. But, in choosing the president, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the house of representatives shall not choose a president, whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the vice-president shall act as president, as in the case of the death, or other constitutional disability of the president. The person having the greatest number of votes as vice-president, shall be the vice-president, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if no person have a majority, then, from the two highest numbers on the lists, the senate shall choose the vice-president-a querum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person, constitutionally ineligible to the office of president, shall be eligible to that of vice-president of the United States. 8 M DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. JULY 4th, 1776. THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED. 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. prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world: Το 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 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. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 689 He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states-for that purpose obstructing the laws of 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 offences; 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, 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 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 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 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 foregoing declaration was, by order of Congress, engrossed and signed by the following members: ADAMS, JOHN ADAMS, SAMUEL BARTLETT, JOSIAH BRAXTON, CARTER CARROLL, CHARLES, of Carrollton CHASE, SAMUEL CLARK, ABRAHAM CLYMER, GEORGE ELLERY, WILLIAM HANCOCK, JOHN HARRISON, BENJAMIN HEYWARD, THOMAS, Jun. HEWES, JOSEPH HOOPER, WILLIAM HOPKINS, STEPHEN HUNTINGTON, SAMUEL LEE, FRANCIS LIGHTFOOT LEE, RICHARD HENRY LYNCH, THOMAS, Jun. M'KEAN, THOMAS MORRIS, ROBERT MORTON, JOHN NELSON, THOMAS, Jun. PAINE, ROBERT TREAT READ, GEORGE RUSH, BENJAMIN, M. D STOCKTON, RICHARD STONE, THOMAS WALTON, GEORGE WHIPPLE, WILLIAM |