Congress proceeded the same day to consider the Declaration of Independence, which had been reported and laid on the table the Friday preceding, and on Monday referred to a committee of the whole.  The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with, still haunted the minds of many.  For this reason, those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offence.  The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it.  Our northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.  The debates having taken up the greater parts of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th days of July, were, on the evening of the last, closed; the Declaration was reported by the committee, agreed to by the House, and signed by every member present, except Mr. Dickinson.  As the sentiments of men are known, not only by what they receive, but what they reject also, I will state the form of the Declaration as originally reported.  The parts struck out by Congress shall be distinguished by a black line drawn under them; * and those inserted by them shall be placed in the margin, or in a concurrent column.

[Illustration:  Draft of Declaration of Independence, page016]

[Illustration:  Draft of Declaration of Independence, page017]

[Illustration:  Draft of Declaration of Independence, page018]

[Illustration:  Draft of Declaration of Independence, page019]

[Illustration:  Draft of Declaration of Independence, page020]

[Illustration:  Draft of Declaration of Independence, page021]

     * In this publication, the parts struck out are printed in
     Italics and inclosed in brackets—­and those inserted are
     inclosed in parenthesis.

A declaration by the representatives of the united states of America, in GENERAL congress assembled.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.