THE AMERICAN'S OWN BOOK; OR THE CONSTITUTIONS OF THE SEVERAL STATES IN THE UNION; EMBRACING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED MENTS, AND MUCH OTHER MATTER OF GENERAL INTEREST; FROM AUTHENTIC DOCUMENTS. Embellished with the Seals of the different States. BY J. R. BIGELOW. SECOND EDITION. NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY J. R. BIGELOW. Stereotyped by C. Davison & Company, No. 33 Gold-street, N. Y. 1848. Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1847, BY JOHN R. BIGELOW, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern BODL LIBR REED & CUNNINGHAM, PRINTERS AND STEREOTYPERS. 9 Spruce-street, New-York. WISCONSIN, MISSOURI, WESTERN, AND OREGON TERRITORIES, 506 507 AMERICAN'S OWN BOOK. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. WHEN, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty; and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments, long established, should not be 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 the 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 neces sary for the public good. |