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 mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.


The American Declaration of Independence of 1776 was a compilation of accusations made against King George III of England. The Declaration closely resembles the Magna Carta of 1215 where the noblemen of England wrote a set of charges against the king in hopes of limiting his power. The people of the American colonies were trying to do almost the same thing as their English ancestors, with the exception that they intended to remove themselves from the Kings care completely. In order “to convince the ‘candid world’, the Declaration listed eighteen means George III used to bring about his despotic ends.”1 One of the major accusations made against George III was that:


“he 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 mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.”


When the signatories of The Declaration of Independence wrote this charge against George III, they were complaining how he attempted “to destroy colonial legislative acts and powers”.2 The people were upset that King George III had not allowed the American people to be elected for government and rather that he had chosen the people himself, whom they believed were unsuitable to stand in a government for a country they didn’t know much about. Due to the fact that the people George III chose to run the colonies were unsuitable, the colonial people felt as if the king did not care enough about them, especially because he took such a long time to replace them. The colonists were upset because while they were off fighting the revolution, they were leaving their state unprotected from both internal and external dangers.
To sum up the colonists statement clearly, they believed that the King and parliament were treating them worse then they were treating their subjects back in England and that he and his monarchy would not be able to destroy their hope for democracy. When the charge claims that “whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for exercise”, it refers to the fact that the American people who were fighting in the revolutionary war had returned to have the Legislative Power put in place. The document was especially important at the time because it “notified the world that the Americans were serious”3 about their intent to install a democratic government.
The American colonists had felt misused by both the monarch and parliament for a long period of time and they were distraught because they were unable to elect their own representatives unlike the people in England. Once the idea of democracy entered their minds, neither the king nor his forces were able to destroy their dream and they had continued to fight until they had won both their freedom from England and the right to have their own Legislature. Through separating with the monarch and parliament, the American people were able to achieve what they had dreamed, both a democratic government and the freedom from Britain.




William Raymond Smith, “The Rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence,” College English, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Jan, 1965): 308.
William Raymond Smith, “The Rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence,” College English, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Jan, 1965): 308.
Edward S. Corwin & Jack W. Peltason, “Understanding the Constitution,” Dryden Press, (1958): 4.