4697. LIBERTY, Preservation of.—
We do then most solemnly, before God and the
world declare that, regardless of every consequence,
at the risk of every distress, the
arms we have been compelled to assume we
will use with the perseverance, exerting to
their utmost energies all those powers which
our Creator hath given us, to preserve that
liberty which He committed to us in sacred
deposit and to protect from every hostile hand
our lives and our properties.—
Declaration on Taking up Arms.
Ford ed., i, 474.
(July. 1775)
