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 meantime, exposed to all the danger of invasion from without and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose, obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration 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 harass 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:

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 offenses: For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring 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 powers of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

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 complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and 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 endeavored 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.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts made 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 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 the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES;

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 the Deputies from the several colonies, as follows:

JOHN HANCOCK, President,

II. MICHIGAN AS A POLITICAL COMMONWEALTH.

As connecting Michigan with the Centennial, some account of the rise and progress of the State as a political commonwealth, and as one of the States of the Union, properly follows the recital of events leading to the adoption of the Declaration, and to the establishment of the nationality which our Centennial

commemorates.

FIRST EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT.

The first European settlement of the territory comprised within the State of Michigan, was by the French, whose missionaries and traders meandered its coasts through the great lakes and rivers, from the head of ocean navigation on the River St. Lawrence. Missionaries are said to have visited Detroit as early as 1620, but the first extended reconnoisance, reaching as far as the falls of the River St. Mary, was in 1641. The first settlements having been made along the coasts, the original stock is clearly traceable in many localities through their descendants, and has furnished many names intimately associated with the development of the State.

TERRITORIAL SOVEREIGNTY AND GOVERNMENT,

Under the French and British dominion, the territory was politically associated with the Canadas, but became part of the territory of Virginia at the close of the war of independence, although it was not formally occupied by the United States until 1796. Virginia had in the meantime ceded to the United States all of her territory northwest of the Ohio river, and Congress, by the historical "Ordinance of '87," passed July 13th of that year, provided for its government as the "Northwest Territory." The government of the territory was committed to a governor, a secretary, and three judges, to be appointed by Congress. The law-making power was vested in the "governor and judges until such time as a general assembly or legislature should be chosen, which might be done when the district should have a population of not less than five thousand persons. The ordinance contemplated the ultimate division of the territory into not less than three, nor more than five, States, and hence has grown the five States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The question of the descent of the territorial sovereignty, though of no practical importance, yet has a historical interest, especially to all residents of the State who are permanently identified with it. The writer had supposed that the descent through the State of Virginia was unquestioned, until a different claim came to his notice, during some investigations made in the winter of 1876, namely, the claims of Connecticut and Massachusetts. Still another position is held by some, that the sovereignty never attached to either of the States named, but descended directly from Great Britain to the United States. The subject is deemed of sufficient importance to call for its brief discussion in this connection. In the "Statistical Atlas of the United States," compiled by Francis A. Walker, by authority of Congress, and based on the results of the ninth census, the Virginia cession is made to terminate at the forty-first parallel of north latitude, when the "Connecticut cession" intervenes, extending to forty-two degrees, two minutes; here commencing the "Massachusetts cession," extending northward to near the forty-fifth parallel, or about on an east and west line crossing the lower point of Saginaw bay. Whence sovereignty was derived to territory north of this line, is not stated. The article referring to this chart, compiled by S. W. Stocking, of the United States patent office, says in explanation: "Virginia, by virtue of conquests of her militia, asserted title as far north as lakes Erie and Michigan, but due recognition of the ancient charter boundary of the colony of Connecticut places the northern limit of the cession on the forty-first parallel of north latitude."

The United States census report of 1870, vol. 1, page 573, speaks of the Virginia cession as "including the State of Kentucky, and the parts of the States of Illinois, Ohio and Indiana which lie south of the forty-first parallel," and does not recognize the claim of Virginia to anything north of that line, but treats the Connecticut and Massachusetts claims as conclusive.

Feeling some interest in knowing whence was descended the political sovereignty of the State, and without stating the conflicting claims, the writer inquired of the Hon. Charles I. Walker, of Detroit, a gentleman of admitted knowledge on the subject of Northwestern history. He answered without hesitation, that the sovereignty descended to the United States from the State of Virginia, referring, at the same time, to an address delivered by himself before the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, in 1871, in which is contained an account of the military conquest and occupation of the Northwest Territory by General George Rogers Clark, under the authority of the State of Virginia, during the war of the revolution. He also gave some verbal suggestions bearing upon the question, some of which are incorporated herein.