For a long time after such dissolution, it has been refused to permit others to be elected; whereby the legislative power, 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. Endeavors have been made to prevent the population of these states, by obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of land. The administration of justice has been obstructed by the refusing of assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. Judges have been made dependent on the crown alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. A multitude of new offices have been erected, and swarms of officers have been sent hither to harrass the people, and eat out their substance. Standing armies have been kept up among us in times of peace, without the consent of our legislatures. The military has been rendered independent of, and superior to the civil power. A plan has been formed to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws. Acts have been passed by the British legislature, 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 the British parliament invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. The crown of Great-Britain has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of its protection and waging war against us. Our seas have been plundered, our coasts ravaged, our towns burnt, and the lives of our people destroyed. Large armies of foreign mercenaries are at this time transporting, 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 a civilized nation. Our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, have been constrained to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.