When is the last time we read the Declaration of Independence?  Can our children or grandchildren recite its beginning paragraphs from memory as we can?
The Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4^th, 1776, and signed by 56 men including its primary author Thomas Jefferson as well as John Adams, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Charles Carroll who died in 1832 at the age of 96, the last survivor of the signers.
Simply stated, the signers were leaders in the 13 original colonies located contiguously in the eastern part of this continent.  The colonies paid taxes to Great Britain, the mother country that became tyrannical, causing her children to break free and declare their independence.  The 13 colonies grew up to become the 50 United States of America.  Amazing!
Many citizens today are not students of history.  This has allowed, in some instances, the rewriting of history and the occasional thwarting of facts.  It, therefore, serves us well when we can read some of the original material ourselves, the material that includes the actual words and phrases of our founding fathers rather than the opinions and judgments of others.
Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that "the God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time," went on to become the third president of the United States of America.  After more than two centuries, there is still a struggle for life and liberty in our land, because the right to life and liberty cannot take a back seat in a civilized world.
Thomas Jefferson also wrote:  "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."  With mass media in a global world, tyranny of the mind is more threatening than ever before, but so is the opportunity to seek and know the truth.
People of good will do not like hostilities.  They do not want war.  At the same time, it cannot be denied that it was the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) that brought freedom to the 13 colonies and helped create the most generous and peace-loving nation on earth.  In its accurate and honest definition, war against tyranny and injustice is directly related to what we celebrate every year on the Fourth of July. 
This declared freedom from the tyranny and injustice that had been so blatantly put upon the colonies by King George III was documented and signed for that generation and future generations.  Its beginning paragraphs, those that many of us memorized as young students, are being reprinted in these pages of the Victoria Gazette for our continuing education, edification, and encouragement. 
The Victoria Gazette, which has always been a student of the history of Victoria and the people of Victoria, humbly acknowledges from where stems the freedom to work, live, play, and pray in Victoria as we do.  It seems fitting to honor the origins of that freedom as we move into Fourth of July celebrations.
We might imagine for ourselves those days of dread, suspense, suffering … and hope ... as the colonies prepared for the War of Independence.  As King George read the accusations against him, contained within the Declaration of Independence, the fireworks in his feeble brain probably rivaled the most elaborate fireworks that are seen in cities and villages across our land today. 

Declaration of Independence
Adopted in Congress 4 July 1776
The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

"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.
"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with 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 to 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 history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these 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.
"He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate 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.

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