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4. No one can be a good citizen unless he be a good parent, a good son, a good brother, a good friend, and a good husband.

5. No one can be a man of worth unless he be a candid, faithful and religious observer of the laws: the exercise of private and domestic virtues is the basis of public virtue.

The duty of society with respect to its individual members, is the social guarantee. This consists in the obligation on the whole to secure to every individual the enjoyment and preservation of his rights, which is the foundation of the national sovereignty.

2. The social guarantee cannot exist unless the law clearly determines the bounds of the answers vested in the functionaries—nor when the responsibility of the public functionaries has not been expressly determined and defined.

3. Public succor is a sacred duty of society; it ought to provide for the subsistence of the unfortunate citizens, either by ensuring employment to those who are capable of acquiring means of subsistence, or else by affording the means of support to such as cannot acquire it by labor.

4 Instruction is necessary for all: Society ought to promote with all the means in its power, the enlightenment of the public mind, and place instruction within the attainment of every individual.

This our solemn declaration, is to be communicated to the supreme executive power, in order to be proclaimed for the information of all, by such means as it may judge most expedient.

We, the representatives of the federal provinces of Caracas, Cumana, Barinas, Margarita, Barcelona, Merida, and Truxillio constituting the confederation of Venezuela, on the southern continent of America, in Congress assembled; considering, that we have been in the full and entire possession of our natural rights since the 19th of April, 1810, which we reassumed in consequence of the transactions at Bayonne, the abdication of the Spanish throne, by the conquest of Spain, and the accession of a new dynasty, established without our consent. While we avail ourselves of the rights of men, which have been withheld from us by force for more than three centuries, and to which we are restored by the political revolutions in human affairs, we think it becoming to state to the world the reasons by which we are called to the free exercise of the sovereign authority.

We deem it unnecessary to insist upon the unquestionable right which every conquered country holds to restore itself to liberty and independence; we pass over in a general silence, the long series of afflictions, oppressions, and privations, which the fatal law of conquest has indiscriminately involved the discoverers, conquerors, and settlers of these countries; whose condition has been made wretched by the very means which should have promoted their felicity: throwing a veil over three centuries of Spanish dominion in America, we shall confine ourselves to the narration of recent and well known facts, which prove how much we have been afflicted; & that we should not be involved in the commotions, disorders, and conquests, which have divided Spain.

The disorders of Europe had increased the evils under which we before suffered; by obstructing complaints and frustrating the means of redress; by authorising the governors placed over us by Spain, to insult and oppress us with impunity, leaving us without the protecion or the support of the laws.

It is contrary to the order of nature, impracticable in relation to the government of Spain, and has been more afflicting to America, that territories so much more extensive, and a population incomparably more numerous, should be subjected and dependant on a peninsular corner of the European continent.

The cession and abdication made at Bayonne, the transactions at the Escurial and at Aranjuez; and the orders issued by the imperial lieutenant the marshal duke of Berg to America, authorized the exercise of those rights, which till that period the Americans had sacrificed to the preservation and integrity of the Spanish nation.

The people of Venezuela, were the first who generally acknowledged, and who preferred that integrity, never forsaking the interests of their European brethren while there remained the least prospect of salvation.

America has acquired a new existence; she was able and was bound to take charge of her own safety and prosperity; she was at liberty to acknowledge or to reject the authority of a king who was so little deserving of that power as to regard his personal safety more than that of the nation over which he had been placed.

All the Bourbons who occurred in the futile stipulations of Bayonne, having withdrawn from the Spanish territory contrary to the will of the people, abrogated, dishonored, ana stamped upon all the sacred obligations which they had contracted with the Spaniards of both worlds, who with their blood and treasures had placed them on the throne in opposition to the efforts of the house of Austria: such conduct has rendered them unfit to reign over a free people, whom they disposed of like a gang of slaves.

The intrusive governments which have arrogated to themselves the authority which belongs only to the national representation, treacherously availed themselves of the known good faith, the distance, and effects, which ignorance and oppression had produced among the Americans, to direct their passions against the new dynasty which had been imposed upon Spain, and in opposition to their own principles, kept up the illusion amongst us in favor of Ferdinand, but only in order to baffle our national hopes and to make us with greater impunity their prey; they hold forth to us promises of liberty, equality, and fraternity in pompous discourses, the more effectually to conceal the snare which they were insidiously laying for us by an inefficient and degrading shew of representation.

As soon as the various forms of the Spanish government were overthrown, and others had been successively substituted, and imperious necessity had taught Venezuela to look to her own safety, in order to support the king, and afford an assylum to their European brethren against the calamities by which they were menaced, all their former services were disregarded; new measures were adopted against us, and the very steps taken for the preservation of the Spanish government were branded with the titles of insurrection, perfidy and ingratitude, but only because the door was closed against a monopoly of power which they had expeced to perpeuate in the name of a king whose dominion was imaginary.