Page 88 - JM Book 9/2020

command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. It was intended to be an expression of the American mind.” He paused and listened to the speaker. “I only repeated what has been printed in our newspapers and said or thought by a large number of our citizens.”
“I have made it a rule,” Franklin said as he looked at Jefferson, “to avoid becoming the draftsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body. I can only imagine what you must be feeling as you watch this process unfold.”
When Jefferson looked up, Thomson was starting to read the list of abuses that King George III had imposed on the colonies.
“He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good,” Thomson read.
For the rest of the day the charges Jefferson wrote that itemized King George’s actions against the colonists were read and debated. This long list of indictments summarized twelve years of colonial oppression by King George. The majority of the debate and the number of changes made to the Declaration were focused on this list.
The indictments against the king included:
• He vetoed laws passed by colonial legislatures.
• He dissolved local legislative bodies.
• He prevented new settlers from coming to America.
• He imposed laws and taxes on the citizens without their consent. • He suspended trial by jury and made the judges dependent on
his will.
• He kept a standing army in the colonies during peacetime.
• He required private citizens to provide housing for British troops. • He declared the colonies out of his protection.
• He cut off American trade with other countries.
• He confiscated American ships at sea.
• He hired foreign mercenaries to fight against the colonists.
• He installed new government officers that harassed the people.
• He made the military independent and superior over American
civil authority.
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