From: MCareful@continentalmail.com
To: Sons of Liberty (John Hancock (president), Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts; Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, and George Walton of Georgia; William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, and John Penn of North Carolina; Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., and Arthur Middleton of South Carolina; Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, and Charles Carroll of Maryland; George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, and Carter Braxton of Virginia; Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, and George Ross of Pennsylvania; Caesar Rodney and George Read of Delaware; William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, and Lewis Morris of New York; Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, and Abraham Clark of New Jersey; Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, and Matthew Thornton of New Hampshire; Stephen Hopkins and William Ellery of Rhode Island; and Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, and Oliver Wolcott)
Date: July 3, 1776
Subject: Final Draft of the Declaration of Independence
Gentlemen,
My comments in red.
Overall, I think it is excellent!!!
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. (Great Intro)
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. (this is a key point, our rights are from God, not government) 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. (We should all feel safe from an oppressive overbearing, overly intrusive government.)
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience has 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 (we should not be ruled by an unelected senile old autocrat) 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.
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 will not allow some governors to secure our border safety to the endangerment of our people)
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 only seems interested in the people who live on the coasts, in particular those in the big cities. He does not seem to care about the rural Colonists.)
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 decides our affairs with international leaders in Europe without input from the people…what an aristocratic snob)
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people. (Further, he has formed government commissions which do not represent 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 meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. (Yes!!! all along our borders)
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 the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
(Yes, it seems that there are two scales and standards of justice)
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. (Yes, this administrative state is overbearing…so many unnecessary rules and regulations which stifle commerce and our economic growth.)
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. (Note to draft, we need a Constitution which guarantees the right of the people to bear arms.)
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; (Another example of two-tiered justice)
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world; (why can’t we get that great vodka anymore…and why are our prices so high….doesn’t this idiot understand basic economics.)
For imposing taxes on us without our consent; (and to pay for what,?!?! a greater number of people to govern us?!)
For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses;
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; (changing our elections laws, and even trying to change the laws of God.)
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. (Look at the rat holes our major cities have become)
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. (Another reason for the Gun Amendment discussed earlier)
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst 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. (The government has not protected our people, businesses, and government buildings from the destruction of forces with wantonly destroy…without consequence)
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. (They repeatedly feel that their whimsical concepts of government should hold sway over the peoples’ rights, needs, desires, and fairness.) 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 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.
I say run with it...
Malachi