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“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.”
Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson (1776)
In line 1, Thomas Jefferson refers to a “...long train of abuses”. What are some examples of actions that Great Britain took prior to 1776 that the colonists might have viewed as abuses?
