The Declaration argues that government is created by the consent of citizens who are equal in their rights, and the protection of these rights fundamentally limits that government. The grievances prosecute the case against the King’s repeated violations of the colonists’ long-standing rights under English law. The closing two sentences of the second paragraph link the self-evident truths of the Declaration to the list of grievances against the King by asserting “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.” The Americans announce that the history of the King’s acts is despotic and that he aims to reign tyrannically over the states. This is more than injustice or abuse of power; it is absolute despotism, and the bill of grievances will prove it.¹⁶ 

Although the grievances have fallen into obscurity, they are “the reason the Declaration was written and promulgated—to justify the severing of the political bands with Britain….” Historian Pauline Maier has illuminated this section of the document because it demonstrates what the Americans believed were the ethical limits of power and presented their brief to the world as justification for separating from Great Britain.¹⁷ 

The grievances are all listed in support of a single proposition: That 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.” Absolutism, the Founders would have said, has an opposite: The rule of law that is made by the wisdom of the whole community. The rulers of Great Britain, they saw, purposed to rule the colonists without the benefit of law, by their own will alone.

The Second Continental Congress, which approved the Declaration of Independence, listed 28 grievances as a matter of common law argument that these allegations were backed by substantial proof. Most of the grievances (24 of the 28) were derived from the newly formed state constitutions. New Hampshire’s Constitution contains five of the charges in the Declaration, and South Carolina’s and Virginia’s each list 19. Jefferson did not have to look far to find the necessary material for these charges.

These general abuses and usurpations, committed at different times against one or more states, do not immediately establish tyranny. The tyranny and the outrage against the King’s actions come from “a hidden premise”: The English constitutional tradition, which the Americans claimed as their rightful heritage. These abuses were of such significance that nearly every grievance in the Declaration is addressed and prevented by a specific provision in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The grievances add political substance to the abstract formulations that compose the self-evident truths; while they do not add to the ontological reality of natural rights, without them, it is hard to understand how natural rights alone would justify a revolution. The upshot is that the grievances prevent arbitrary recourse to destructive rebellions because they specifically answer the question of why the British government should be thrown off and do so by tethering natural rights to ancient common law rights.¹⁸ 

The revolution remained justifiable precisely because the natural rights claims were joined to the English tradition’s common law rights and liberties. The self-evident truths of the Declaration, Professor James Stoner argues, by themselves never gave effect to a wide-ranging social and cultural revolution:

The Declaration justifies a political revolution, to be sure, but the constitutional dispute with England gave our revolution its distinctive form and contributed to its success. That revolution was not without its lawless moments, but on the whole its spirit was to reinvigorate old forms of self-governance and to reinforce protection for property and social order. Its self-evident first principles were soon to challenge some of these forms—restrictions on the suffrage, for example, and in some of the states, slavery, itself unknown at common law—but it is no more an accident that these challenges were approached in a spirit of constitutional compromise than that the revolution culminated in a Constitution. There, after all, in the middle division of the middle part of the Declaration, is mention of an unwritten “Constitution” which the Americans already assert to be their own.19

While a detailed investigation of each grievance would go far beyond the limits of this brief study, the “repeated Injuries and Usurpations” that led to “the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny” can be grouped into three categories: “Injuries,” which are acts by the King that were not inherently unjust but were performed in an abusive manner (I–XIII); “Usurpations,” which are powers that were exercised but not sanctioned by anything in the English constitution (XIV–XXII); and malicious acts whose aim was “absolute Tyranny” (XXIII–XXVII). Finally, grievance XXVIII summarizes these charges and brings to a crescendo the overall purpose of the Declaration: “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.” The Americans, they said, had offered at every point to remain a deliberative people “who Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms” only to be answered by further “Injury.” When read in this manner, the grievances move toward a necessary conclusion. 

The first seven items bear upon the King’s relationship to legislative power: Specifically, the legislatures of the colonies. Attacking legislatures prevents a sovereign people from being a self-governing people. This was the King’s chief misdeed.

The next two items deal with the King’s relationship to the judiciary. The monarch has not permitted the judicial protection of the people and has abolished the independence of the judiciary. “He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers” and “has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.” The Declaration stated the King wanted to bend the judicial power to his will. These are the actions of an aspiring tyrant.

Next come problems of administration and defense, key parts of a monarch’s office, but those portray a “Design” of subjugation of the colonies. The list is short but telling: (1) “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to Harass our people, and eat out their substance.” (2) “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” (3) “He has affected to render the Military Independent of and superior to the Civil Power.” The executive aims to despoil the people with “swarms of Officers” and has placed the military over civil government. We were now in wartime, but it was still peacetime when those actions began. The King now exercised his powers in destructive ways.

Next, the Declaration lists nine usurpations by the King in league “with others.” Parliament had been complicit in the King’s violation of the “constitution” that governed relations between the colonies and the Empire: “He has combined with others [Parliament] to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.” Nine specific instances of Parliament’s “pretended Legislation” are detailed, with the final charge being a direct hit on the heart of the American colonies’ self-government: “pretended Legislation” aimed at “suspending our own Legislatures and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.”

The final section of the indictments refocuses on the King and the war stance of his actions. He had removed his protection from the colonies and reinaugurated a state of nature between them and himself by waging war against the colonies. His conduct included “transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny,” “exciting domestic insurrections amongst us,” and enlisting Indian tribes to wage war against “all ages, sexes, and conditions.” He also made citizens captured at sea fight against their country and brethren. Who sows such discord among citizens and turns them against one another? Tyrants do.

After carefully considering these grievances, the Declaration might be restated as follows: There are principles of politics that are worthy of free and virtuous people, and they have been violated. Here are the actions of the King, which evidence a settled design of despotic ambition, and the colonists, out of a sense of right and duty, determine they will not bow down to it but will instead declare their independence as a people. 

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Abuses/Constitutional Violations 

• 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 Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
• He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
• 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 mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
• He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations 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, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
• 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: 

Usurpations

• 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 Trial by Jury:
• For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
• For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring 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:
• For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

Acts of War

• 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, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
• He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
• He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

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. 

ENDNOTES:

16. Ross Lence, “Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence: The Power and Natural Rights of a Free People,” Political Science Reviewer, Vol. 6 (Fall 1976), pp. 1–34.

17. Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), p. 105.

18. James R. Stoner, “Is There a Political Philosophy in the Declaration of Independence?” The Intercollegiate Review, Fall/Winter 2005, pp. 3–11, https://democracy.missouri.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/1-SOF-Seminar-Dyer-Readings.pdf (accessed October 4, 2024).

19. Ibid., pp. 5–7.