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A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875
Journals of the Continental Congress --A Declaration by the representatives of the United States of America in [General] 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 inherent and inalienable 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
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becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying it's foundation on such principles, and organising it's 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 begun at a distinguished period and 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 expunge their former systems of government. the history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated unremitting injuries and usurpations among which appears no solitary fact to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest, but all have 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, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.
he has refused his assent to laws the most wholsome 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 accomodation 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 and continually for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
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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 invasions from without and convulsions within.
he has endeavored 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 suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these states by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
he has made our judges dependant on his will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and paiment of their salaries.
he has erected a multitude of new offices by a self assumed power and sent hither swarms of new officers to harrass our people and eat out their substance
he has kept among us in times of peace standing armies and ships of war 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 constitutions 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 it's boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies states; 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.
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he has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. withdrawing his governors and declaring us out of his allegiance and protection
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 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 of existence.
he has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow-citizens with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property.
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's 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 to 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
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is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people who mean to be free. future ages will scarcely believe that the hardiness of one man adventured, within the short compass of twelve years only, to lay a foundation so broad and so undisguised for tyranny over a people fostered and fixed in principles of freedom.
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 a jurisdiction over us. these our states. we have reminded 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 expence of our own blood and treasure, unassisted by the wealth or the 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 have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity and we have conjured them by as well as to the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which would inevitably were likely to interrupt our connection and 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 power. at this very time too they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only souldiers 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 too. we will tread it apart from them, and we must therefore acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our eternal separation! and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
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We therefore the representatives of the United states of America in General Congress assembled
do in the name and by authority of the good people of these states reject 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 all political connection which may heretofore have subsisted between us, and the people or parliament of Great Britain: and finally we do assert and declare these colonies to be free and independant states
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 independant 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 independant states they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independant 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.
On Friday July 12. the committee appointed to draw the articles of Confederation reported them, and on the 22d the house resolved themselves into a comm?? to take them into consideration.1 on the 30th and 31st of that month and 1st 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. 'Art. XI. all charges of war and all other expences 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,
[Note 1: 1 Adams gives notes of a debate on July 25 and 26, on p. 1076, ante.]
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a true account of which, distinguishing the white inhabitants, shall be triennially taken and transmitted to the assembly of the United states.'
Mr Chase1 moved that the quotas should be fixed, not by the number of inhabitants of every condition, but by that of the 'white inhabitants.' he admitted that taxation should be alwais 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 alwais be obtained. he therefore thought it the best mode which we could adopt, with one exception only. he observed that negroes are property, and as such cannot be distinguished from the lands or personalties 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 farmers' heads and the heads of their cattle. that the method proposed would therefore tax the Southern states according to their numbers and their wealth conjunctly, while the Northern would be taxed on numbers only: that negroes in fact should not be considered as members of the state, more than cattle, and that they have no more interest in it.
[Note 1: 1 Adams gives notes on this speech, and shows that it was made on July 30. See p. 1079, ante.]
Mr John Adams observed that the numbers of people were taken by this article as an index of the wealth of the state and not as subjects of taxation. that as to this matter it was of no consequence by what name you called your people whether by that of freemen or of slaves. that in some countries the labouring poor were called freemen, in others they were called slaves: but that the difference as to the state was imaginary only. what matters it whether a landlord, employing ten laborers in his farm, gives them annually as much money as will buy them the necessaries of life, or gives them those necessaries at short hand. the ten labourers add as much wealth annually to the state, increase it's exports as much in the one case as the other. certainly 500 freemen produce no more profits, no greater surplus for
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the paiment of taxes than 500 slaves. therefore the state in which are the labourers called freemen should be taxed no more than that in which are those called slaves. suppose by any extraordinary operation of nature or of law, one half the labourers of a state could in the course of one night be transformed into slaves: would the state be made the poorer or the less able to pay taxes? that the condition of the labouring poor in most countries, that of the fishermen particularly of the Northern states is as abject as that of slaves. it is the number of labourers which produce the surplus for taxation, and numbers therefore indiscriminately are the fair index of wealth. that it is the use of the word 'property' here, and it's application to some of the people of the state, which produces the fallacy. how does the Southern farmer procure slaves? either by importation or by purchase from his neighbor. if he imports a slave, he adds one to the number of labourers in his country, and proportionably to it's profits and abilities to pay taxes. if he buys from his neighbor, it is only a transfer of a labourer from one farm to another, which does not change the annual produce of the state, and therefore should not change it's tax. that if a Northern farmer works ten labourers on his farm, he can it is true, invest the surplus of ten mens' labour in cattle: but so may the Southern farmer working ten slaves. that a state of 100,000 freemen can maintain no more cattle than one of 100,000 slaves. therefore they have no more of that kind of property. that a slave may indeed from the custom of speech be more properly called the wealth of his master, than the free labourer might be called the wealth of his employer: but as to the state both were equally it's wealth, and should therefore equally add to the quota of it's tax.
Mr Harrison proposed a compromise, that two slaves should be counted as one freeman. he affirmed that slaves did not do so much work as freemen, and doubted if two effected more than one. that this was proved by the price of labor, the hire of a labourer in the Southern colonies being from 8. to 12 £, while in the Northern it was generally 24 £.
Mr Wilson said that if this amendment should take place the Southern colonies would have all the benefit of slaves, whilst the Northern ones would bear the burthen. that slaves increase the profits of a state, which the Southern states mean to take to themselves; that they also increase the burthen of defence, which would of course fall so much the heavier on the Northern. that slaves occupy the places of freemen and eat their food. dismiss your slaves and freemen will take
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their places. it is our duty to lay every discouragement on the importation of slaves: but this amendment would give the jus trium liberorum to him who would import slaves. that other kinds of property were pretty equally distributed thro' all the colonies: there were as many cattle, horses, and sheep in the North as the South,, and South as the North: but not so as to slaves. that experience has shewn that those colonies have been alwais able to pay most which have the most inhabitants, whether they be black or white. and the practice of the Southern colonies has always been to make every farmer pay poll taxes upon all his labourers whether they be black or white. he acknowledges indeed that freemen work the most; but they consume the most also. they do not produce a greater surplus for taxation. the slave is neither fed nor clothed so expensively as a freeman. again white women are exempted from labour generally, which negro women are not. in this then the Southern states have an advantage as the article now stands. it has sometimes been said that slavery is necessary because the commodities they raise would be too dear for market if cultivated by freemen; but now it is said that the labour of the slave is the dearest.
Mr Payne urged the original resolution of Congress, to proportion the quotas of the states to the number of souls.
Dr Witherspoon was of opinion that the value of lands and houses was the best estimate of the wealth of a nation, and that it was practicable to obtain such a valuation. this is the true barometer of wealth. the one now proposed is imperfect in itself and unequal between the states. it has been objected that negroes eat the food of freemen, and therefore should be taxed. horses also eat the food of freemen; therefore they also should be taxed. it has been said too that in carrying slaves into the estimate of the taxes the state is to pay, we do no more than those states themselves do who always take slaves into the estimate of the taxes the individual is to pay. but the cases are not parallel. in the Southern colonies slaves pervade the whole colony; but they do no pervade the whole continent. that as to the original resolution of Congress,1 it was temporary only, and related to the monies heretofore emitted: whereas we are now entering into a new compact and therefore stand on original ground.2
[Note 1: 1 The original notes here inserted, "to proportion the quotas according to the souls."]
[Note 2: 2 Adams gives some remarks by Thomas Lynch, Benjamin Franklin, and Edward Rutledge. See p. 1080, ante. Also remarks on trade and the Indians.]
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