Friday, February 22, 2008

Library of Congress link to Draft of the
Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson

Writing against the Sovereign King of England
(a denial of the flawed legal theory of "Sovereign Immunity"
and its also un-Constitutional sub-set "Judicial Immunity"
promoted by irresponsible elected servants and
unaccountable judges in America today...)
Jefferson wrote:

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself,
violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty
in the persons of a distant people who never offended him,
captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere,
or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.
this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of
infidel powers,
is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain.
determined to keep open a market where
MEN should be bought & sold,
he has prostituted his negative
for suppressing every legislative attempt
to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce:
and that this assemblage of horrors
might want no fact of distinguished die,
he is now exciting those very people
to rise in arms among us,
and to purchase that liberty
of which he has deprived them,
& murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them;
thus paying off former crimes
committed against the
liberties of one people,
with crimes which he urges them to commit
against the
lives of another.

Rough draft of Declaration of Independence at the Library of Congress.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html

Sadly these powerful and wise words of Jefferson against "Chattel Slavery" were deleted from the version we know.

Other Jefferson's words against "Judicial Slavery", decrying the injustice of judges and judiciary powers remained in our Declaration of Independence, and Jefferson returned to that same threat to freedom during and after his two terms as President, as is quoted in the introductions to the songs of this Testament of Freedom performance.

he has suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these colonies, refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers:

he has made our judges dependant on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and amount of their salaries:

he has erected a multitude of new offices by a self-assumed power, & sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our people & eat out their substance:

...

he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions and unacknoleged by our laws; giving his assent to their pretended acts of legislation, ...

for protecting them by a mock-trial from punishment for any murders they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;

...

for depriving us of the benefits of trial by jury;

for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences: for taking away our charters, & altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;

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