Arts, Crafts, Music, & Events of Breckinridge County Issue 2, July 2015 | Page 7

changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath 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 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 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 has called together legislative bodies at places unusual,
uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public