Our cause is just. Our union is perfect.

Let these truths be indelibly impressed on our minds — that we cannot be happy, without being FREE — that we cannot be free, without being secure in our property— that we cannot be secure in our property, if, without our consent, others may, as by right, take it away — that taxes imposed on us by parliament, do thus take it away.

If the General Government should be left dependent on the State Legislatures, it would be happy for us if we had never met in this room.

What concerns all, should be considered by all; and individuals may injure a whole society, by not declaring their sentiments. It is therefore not only their right, but their duty, to declare them.

The rights essential to happiness. . . . We claim them from a higher source - from the King of kings and Lord of all the earth.

With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves.

Let our government be like that of the solar system. Let the general government be like the sun and the states the planets, repelled yet attracted, and the whole moving regularly and harmoniously in several orbits.