Declaration of Independence of 2523
When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression.
When the Laws and Protections of their Alliance, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a limited alliance, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood of corporate hegemons, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the everready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants.
When, long after the spirit of the law has departed, moderation is at length so far lost by those in power, that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms themselves of representation discontinued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons, and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon them at the point of the bayonet.
When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication on the part of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original elements. In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future welfare and happiness.
Nations, as well as individuals, are amenable for their acts to the public opinion of mankind. A statement of a part of our grievances is therefore submitted to an impartial world, in justification of the hazardous but unavoidable step now taken, of severing our political connection with the Anglo-Sino Alliance, and assuming an independent attitude among all the planets of the 'Verse.
The Alliance, by its colonization laws, invited and induced the Humanity colonize its wilderness under the pledged faith of protection, that they should continue to enjoy that liberty and government to which they had been habituated in the lands of their birth.
It has sacrificed our welfare to that of the core planets, by which our interests have been continually depressed through a jealous and partial course of legislation, carried on at a far distant seat of government, by a hostile majority, in secret, and this too, notwithstanding we have petitioned in the humblest terms for the establishment of a separate state government, and have, in accordance with the provisions of the national constitution, presented to the general parliament a call for autonomy, which was, without just cause, contemptuously rejected.
It has incarcerated, in perpetuity, our citizens, for no other cause but a zealous endeavor to procure the acceptance of our independence, and the establishment of our own governments.
It has failed and refused to secure, on a firm basis, the right of trial by jury, that palladium of civil liberty, and only safe guarantee for the life, liberty, and property of the citizen.
It has failed to establish any public system of education, although possessed of almost boundless resources, (the public domain,) and although it is an axiom in political science, that unless a people are educated and enlightened, it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self government.
It has suffered the military commandants, stationed among us, to exercise arbitrary acts of oppression and tyrrany, thus trampling upon the most sacred rights of the citizens, and rendering the military superior to the civil power.
It has dissolved, by force of arms, every regional, planetary and local government, and obliged our representatives to fly for their lives from their councils, thus depriving us of the fundamental political right of representation.
It has demanded the surrender of a number of our citizens, and ordered military detachments to seize and carry them into the Core for trial, in contempt of the civil authorities, and in defiance of their laws and constitutions.
It has made piratical attacks upon our commerce, by commissioning privateers and mercenaries, and authorizing them to seize our vessels, and convey the property of our citizens to far distant ports for confiscation.
It has demanded us to deliver up our arms, which are essential to our defense, the rightful property of freemen, and formidable only to tyrannical governments.
It has invaded our realms both by space and by land, with intent to lay waste our territory, and drive us from our homes; and has now a large mercenary army advancing, to carry on against us a war of extermination.
It has, through its use of biotechnology, pharmacology, and cybernetics deprived our own citizens of their fundamental human rights of autonomy and equality. We rebuke and reject that vile means of domination.
It hath been, during the whole time of our connection with it, the contemptible sport and victim of successive military revolutions, and hath continually exhibited every characteristic of a weak, corrupt, and tyrranical government.
These, and other grievances, were patiently borne by the people of Border and Rim, until they reached that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. We then took up arms in defense of our sovereign autonomy. We appealed to the downtrodden populace of the Core for assistance. Our appeal has been made in vain. Though months have elapsed, no sympathetic response has yet been heard from the Interior. We are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion, that the people of the Alliance have acquiesced in the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution therefore of a military government; that they are unfit to be free, and incapable of self government.
The necessity of self-preservation, therefore, now decrees our eternal political separation.
We, therefore, the delegates with plenary powers of the people of Rim and Border, in solemn convention assembled, appealing to a candid Verse for the necessities of our condition, do hereby resolve and declare, that our political connection with the Alliance has forever ended, and that the people of Greater Verse do now constitute free, Sovereign, and independent planets, fully invested with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to independent nations; and, conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we fearlessly and confidently commit the issue to the decision of destiny.
