Of the Necessity of Restoration in the Moral Rightness of Society
When in the natural progress of human affairs, the systems instituted for the common benefit come, through a long course of abuses, to invert their own purposes, and to perpetuate not the prosperity but the servitude of a people, it becomes the duty of the impartial spectator to consider, with sober and sorrowful reflection, the causes which have led to this melancholy distemper. A decent respect for the opinions of mankind, and for the moral order which Providence has implanted within the human breast, requires that we should declare the grave and persistent causes which compel us to seek a restoration of just principles.
We hold these truths to be founded in the original frames of our nature: that while men are unequal in talents and fortune, they are all endowed with an innate sense of personal agency, a proper regard for the fruits of their industry, and a claim to the equitable consideration of their fellows. That to secure these natural expectations, governments and economies are established among men, deriving their just authority from their utility in promoting the safety and happiness of the society. That whenever any such system becomes destructive of these ends, it is both the right and the duty of the people, guided by the cool voice of the impartial spectator within, to examine its errors, to strip it of its usurpations, and to reconstitute its powers on such foundations as may seem most likely to effect their lasting security and tranquillity.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that long-established systems, for all their partial defects, are not to be overturned for light or transient causes; and mankind, from a natural aversion to tumult, 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 systematic oppressions, all tending toward the same invidious object, reveals a deliberate design to reduce a people under absolute economic despotism—by converting public institutions into instruments of private rapacity, by confounding honest industry with parasitical speculation, and by alienating the patrimony of the polity from its rightful stewards—it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such a system, and to provide new guards for their future security, grounded in the immutable principles of natural justice.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these people; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems. The history of the present financial order, and its centuries old governmental regime, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, enslavements, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over the economic life of the nation. To prove this, let facts be submitted to the candid judgment of the world.
They have perverted the institutions designed for the common defence into mechanisms for the private accumulation of power, thereby inverting the very purpose for which they were established.
They have erected an empire of financial abstraction, defended by legal artifice, which wages a silent war upon the productive capacities of the people and evades the natural checks of a free society.
They have infiltrated the economies of nations, converting public resources and the common heritage into collateral for perpetual debts, thereby enslaving the industry of the present and future to the avarice of the few.
They have, through speculative artifices, inflated the nominal value of assets, creating recurrent calamities which devastate the fortunes of the prudent whilst securing indemnities for the architects of the distress.
They have entangled populations in webs of unpayable obligation, often through the calamity of war, condemning posterity to inherit not liberty, but bondage to foreign creditors.
They have, through a neglect of moral and physical guardianship, permitted the poisoning of the common elements of life, weakening the vigour and resolution of the people.
They have subverted the courts of justice, using the forms of law to frustrate its spirit, and dissolving the just claims of the injured in a labyrinth of procedure favourable only to power.
They have debased the medium of exchange through mechanisms beyond public scrutiny, enriching the cunning at the expense of the industrious, and alienating the native from his rightful property.
They have, for the sake of profit and power, sown discord and transmuted the character of communities, weakening the bonds of mutual sympathy which unite a society.
They have profited from the scourges of vice and misery, laundering its proceeds through respectable channels, and thus making crime the foundation of fortune.
They have degraded the seats of learning, turning them from nurseries of virtue and independent thought into mills of a uniform and servile doctrine.
They have prolonged conflicts not from necessity, but from lucre, expending the blood and treasure of the people to feed the engines of debt.
They have monopolized the channels of public discourse, so that the chains of economic servitude appear as the natural order, rather than the artifices of men.
They have abandoned societies after rendering them destitute, only to return as the exclusive purveyors of relief, purchasing the remnants of prosperity at a pittance.
They have, by covert influence, compelled the governors of men to legislate the transfer of wealth from the many to the few, under the colour of law.
They have erected systems of surveillance which commodify the most private sentiments, the better to predict and control the conduct of the unwary.
They have formed a transnational interest, rivaling in power the states themselves, whose sole aim is its own perpetuation and enrichment, regardless of the ruin of nations.
They have exploited public calamities to accelerate the consolidation of assets and the imposition of austerities, increasing dependence whilst pretending to alleviate it.
They have corrupted the administration of justice, allowing violence to prey upon the peaceful, whilst persecuting the honest defender of his own hearth, thus making a mockery of protection.
And most grievous to the moral sense,
They have corrupted the moral sentiments of the young, teaching them to despise their own nature, the timeless beauties of order and strength, and the inherited wisdom of their ancestors, promoting a dangerous distemper of the mind and body that severs the sacred chain of generations.
In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble and earnest terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated and escalating injury. A system of governance so wholly subverted to such ends, which bears every mark of a tyranny, is unfit to rule a free people. Any system of power which would so bring about such a system of governance is not fit to exist.
Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of the attempts by unseen hands to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over our common patrimony through financial artifice. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our settlement and the blood spent in its defence. 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. They too have been deaf to the voice of rightness and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which compels our separation from this financial dominion, while holding fast, with unyielding affection, to the essence of our civilization—its lands, its honourable wealth, its venerable customs, and its native progeny.
We, therefore, the representatives of the people, appealing to the Supreme Judge that is our civilization for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the solemn name and by the moral authority of the good people of this land, publish and declare, that these people are, and of right ought to be, free and independent of the tyranny of the financial world order; that they are absolved from all allegiance to its artificial claims; and that all political and economic connection between them and the system of financial despotism, is and ought to be, totally dissolved. In this restoration, we pledge our fidelity to our civilization, its sacred lands, and its accumulated treasures. Where possible, we bind ourselves to the re-establishment of our ancestral governance, purified of corruption, that it may act as a sentinel for the people once more. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each and all our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.