This Day in History: June 2

For a long time past, this colony has, by a corrupt administration in Great Britain and here, been deprived of the exercise of those powers of Government, without which a people can be neither rich, happy or secure. The whole continent saw the blow pending, which if not warded oh, must inevitably have subverted the freedom and happiness of each colony; the principles of self defence, roused in the breasts of freemen by the dread of impending slavery, caused to be collected the wisdom of America, in a Congress composed of men, who through time must in every land of freedom be revered among the most faithful assertors of the essential rights of human nature.