15. "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 by a mock trial from punishment, any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states; for cutting off our trade with all ports of the world; for imposing taxes on us without our consent; for depriving us 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 in these [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. 16. "He has abdicated government here [withdrawing his governors and declaring us out of his allegiance and protection]. 17. "He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. 18. "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, unworthy the head of a civilized nation. 19. "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. 20. "He has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of the frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions of [existence]. 21. ["He has excited treasonable insurrection of our fellow-citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property.]