I'll group them in two parts. First, the things inflicted upon the leader's own nation:
- 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 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 migration 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
- He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices [...]
- He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
Second, the acts this leader has inflicted upon another nation:
- 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 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 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
- 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, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people
- 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 excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers [...] whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In closing:
- 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.
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.
Tom, 'ol buddy, you're as right about George II as you were about George III, even 229 years later.
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