2. He has forbidden his government to pass laws of immediate and
pressing importance, unless suspended in their operations till his
assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly
neglected to attend to them.
3. 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.
4. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual,
uncomfortable, and distant from the repository of their public
records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance
with his measures.
5. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing,
with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.
6. 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
the dangers of invasions from without, and convulsions within.
7. He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States;
for that purpose obstructing the laws for the naturalization of
foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration
hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
8. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his
assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
9. He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of
their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
10. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither
swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
11. He has kept among us in times of peace, standing armies,
without the consent of our Legislatures.
12. He has affected to render the military independent of, and
superior to, the civil power.
13. 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 a 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;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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