A Biography of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, and of Washington and Patrick Henry With an Appendix, Containing the Constitution of the United States and other Documents“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 inalienable rights; that amongst 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. |
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... delegated to them by the monarchy they corruptly represented. So conclusive and luminous were his expositions of chartered rights on the one hand, and of accumulating wrongs on the other, that he soon became the nucleus of a band of ...
... delegate to the convention that framed the federal constitution. Many of the bright traits of that matchless instrument received their finishing stroke from his master hand. Early in 1790, his infirmities of body confined him to his ...
... delegates. Understanding the wants and feelings of the people, well versed in law and the principles of republicanism, and a ready writer, he was enabled to perform, in a few hours, a work that, in modern times, requires the labours of ...
... Delegates; the same year a judge of the High Court of Chancery, and subsequently, under a new organization of the judiciary, sole chancellor. A more impartial judge never graced the bench than George Wythe. Nothing could induce him to ...
... delegates convened for the purpose, and immediately repaired to the key stone city and entered upon the important duties assigned him. The following year he was continued in that proud station, and affixed his name to the chart of ...