WITNESS. 1. A witness, summoned by one who is party to several suits, is entitled to compensation in each case in which he is summoned. Findlay & Cummings v. Wyser, for use of Colgin, 1 S. 23. 2. Certificate of attendance of witness is transferrable by delivery. Ibid. 3. When a subscribing witness to a deed lives beyond the jurisdiction of the court, so far as his testimony is concerned he may be treated as though he were dead. Barrington & Rhodes v. Snead, 3 S. 201. 4. Statute 1807, restricting charge for attendance in bill of costs, to two witnesses to any one fact, must be understood to mean a material fact; and it seems not to have been the intention to disallow the attendance of witnesses, to the successful party where, from the course of the adversary or the decision of the court, the evidence of such witnesses (otherwise proper), has been superseded or dispensed with. Randolph v. Perry, 2 P. 376. 5. On sci. fa, against defaulting witness, where there appears to be no return-held, sufficient cause to reverse a judgment. Catoe v. Harrison, 3 P. 219. 6. When witnesses are summoned in a cause but not sworn, and it appears from affidavit or otherwise, that they have been summoned to prove material facts, the attendance of such witnesses may be taxed in the bill of costs. Briley v. Hodges, 3 P. 335. 7. A party cannot ask his own witness questions tending to show him incompetent or unworthy of credit, nor can he examine other witnesses to prove him incompetent or unworthy of credit; but he may prove facts in a cause contradicting what he has said. Winston v. Mosely, 2 S. 137. 8. To impeach the credit of a witness, general reputation is admissible, but not such as is confined to a particular class of persons. Drish v. Davenport, 2 S. 266. 9. A witness testifying in chief, should furnish facts from which his opiToulmin v. Austin, 5 S. & P. 410. nion or belief is founded. See Evidence-Free Persons of Color & Indians. WRIT OF ENQUIRY. 1. In actions, sounding in damages, where the plaintiff has to prove the amount of them, as if upon an account, the defendant may after judgment by default, introduce evidence to show that the articles charged were never received, or that the prices were too high; or, if it be for use and occupation of a house, although judgment by default admits that the defendant occupied a house of the plaintiff, yet the former is permitted to prove that he did not occupy the particular house about which the plaintiff has introOpthle Yoholo v. Mitchell, 2 S. & P. 125. duced evidence. 2. Nor is a defendant, upon writ of enquiry, precluded from taking exceptions to the jury. Ibid. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776. THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. WHEN, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary tor 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 entitles them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. Propriety of the declara tion. Unalienable people &c. We hold these truths to be self-evident:-that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with rights of the certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present king of Great Britain, is a Absolute tyr history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct anny the object object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these of the King of States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. Great Britain. Recitation of injuries and usurpations on British Crown. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate the part of the and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained: and when so suspended he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature—a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the repository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for onposing 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 dangers 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 sub stance. 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 cutting off our trade with all parts of the world: For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury: For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences: 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 forms of our govern ments: For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases what soever. 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 among 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. ren. us. British people Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethWe have warned them, from time to time, of attempts Appeal to the by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over fruitless, &c. 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 connexions 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. Declaration We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Su- of Indepen preme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, dence. 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 connexion between them and the absolved from State of Great Britain, is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; their allegiance and that, as free and independent States, they have full power &c. 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 declara The colonies |