National Humanities Center Thomas Hutchinson, Strictures upon the Declaration [of Independence], 1776, excerpts
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which defines the tyrant is
unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
HUTCHINSON. Indignant resentment must seize the breast of every loyal subject. A tyrant, in modern
language, means not merely an absolute and arbitrary but a cruel, merciless Sovereign. Have these
men given an instance of any one Act in which the King has exceeded the just Powers of the Crown
as limited by the English Constitution? Has he ever departed from known established laws and
substituted his own will as the rule of his actions? Has there ever been a Prince by whom subjects in
rebellion have been treated with less severity or with longer forbearance?
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British Brethren. We have warned
them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have
reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native
justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these
usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to
the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must therefore acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our
Separation and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled,
appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the name and by authority
of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and ought
to be,
Free and Independent States, and that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and
that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved,
and that as free and Independent States they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances,
establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and things which Independent States may of right do. And for the
support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to
each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. Signed by order and in behalf of the Congress.
JOHN HANCOCK, President.
HUTCHINSON. They have, my Lord, in their late address to the people of Great Britain, fully avowed these
principles of Independence by declaring they will pay no obedience to the laws of the Supreme
Legislature. They have also pretended that these laws were the mandates of edicts of the Ministers,
not the acts of a constitutional legislative power, and have endeavored to persuade such as they called
their British Brethren to justify the Rebellion begun in America, and from thence they expected a
general convulsion in the Kingdom, and that measures to compel a submission would in this way be
obstructed. These expectations failing, after they had gone too far in acts of Rebellion to hope for
impunity, they were under necessity of a separation, and of involving themselves, and all over whom
they had usurped authority, in the distresses and horrors of war against that power from which they
revolted, and against all who continued in their subjection and fidelity to it. . . .
Suffer me [permit me], my Lord, before I close this Letter, to observe that, though the professed
reason for publishing the Declaration was a decent respect to the opinions of mankind, yet the real
design was to reconcile the people of America to that Independence which always before they had
been made to believe was not intended.
This design has too well succeeded. The people have not
observed the fallacy in reasoning from the whole to part, nor the absurdity of making the governed to
be governors. From a disposition to receive willingly complaints against Rulers, facts misrepresented
have passed without examining. Discerning men have concealed their sentiments, because under the
present free government in America, no man may, by writing or speaking, contradict any part of this
Declaration without being deemed an enemy to his country, and exposed to the rage and fury of the
populace.
I have the honor to be, My LORD, Your Lordship’s must humble and most obedient servant.
Wording in reported draft: “are and of right ought to be.”
Ministers, i.e., officials in the Prime Minister’s cabinet (similar to the U.S. President’s cabinet); not referring to clergymen. Revolutionary leaders
accused cabinet members of instigating parliamentary actions that violated colonists’ rights as Englishmen.
Americans’ allegiance to Britain and the king was reaffirmed in most colonial declarations of rights and grievances, and petitions to the king for
redress, even into 1776. To an extent the statements were pro forma, and to an extent they signalled the colonists’ rejection of parliamentary
authority while maintaining allegiance to the king. Yet by the mid 1770s this middle ground had vanished from many leaders’ rhetoric.