The Venezuelan Declaration of Independence
(July 5, 1811)

In the Name of the All-powerful God,
We, the Representatives of the united Provinces of Caracas,
Cumana, Varinas, Margarita, Barcelona, Merida, and Truxillo,
forming the American Confederation of Venezuela, in the
South Continent, in Congress assembled, considering the full
and absolute possession of our Rights, which we recovered
justly and legally from the 19th of April, 1810, in consequence
of the occurrences in Bayona, and the occupation of the Spanish
Throne by conquest, and the succession of a new Dynasty, constituted
without our consent: are desirous, before we make use
of those Rights, of which we have been deprived by force for
more than three ages, but now restored to us by the political
order of human events, to make known to the world the reasons
which have emanated from these same occurrences, and
which authorise us in the free use we are now about to make of
our own Sovereignty.
We do not wish, nevertheless, to begin by alledging the
rights inherent in every conquered country, to recover its state
of property and independence; we generously forget the long
series of ills, injuries, and privations, which the sad right of
conquest has indistinctly caused, to all the descendants of the
Discoverers, Conquerors, and Settlers of these Countries,
plunged into a worse state by the very same cause that ought to
have favoured them; and drawing a veil over the 300 years of
Spanish dominion in America, we will now only present the authentic
and well-known facts, which ought to have wrested
from one world, the right over the other, by the inversion, disorder,
and conquest, that have already dissolved the Spanish
Nation.
This disorder has increased the ills of America, by rendering
void its claims and remonstrances, enabling the Governors of
Spain to insult and oppress us this part of the Nation, thus leaving
it without the succour and guarantee of the Laws.
It is contrary to order, impossible to the Government of
Spain, and fatal to the welfare of America, that the latter, possessed
of a range of country infinitely more extensive, and a
population incomparably more numerous, should depend and
be subject to a Peninsular Corner of the European Continent.
The Cessions and Abdications made at Bayona, the Revolutions
of the Escurial and Aranjuez, and the Orders of the Royal
Substitute, the Duke of Berg, sent to America, suffice to give
virtue to the rights, which till then the Americans had sacrificed
to the unity and integrity of the Spanish Nation.
Venezuela was the first to acknowledge, and generously to
preserve, this integrity; not to abandon the cause of its brothers,
as long as the same retained the least hope of salvation.
America was called into a new existence, since she could,
and ought, to take upon herself the charge of her own fate and
preservation; as Spain might acknowledge, or not, the rights of
a King, who had preferred his own existence to the dignity of
the Nation over which he governed.
All the Bourbons concurred to the invalid stipulations of
Bayona, abandoning the country of Spain, against the will of the
People;—they violated, disdained, and trampled on the sacred
duty they had contracted with the Spaniards of both Worlds,
when with their blood and treasure they had placed them on
the Throne, in despite of the House of Austria. By such a conduct,
they were left disqualified and incapable of governing a
Free People, whom they have delivered up like a flock of
Slaves.
The intrusive Governments that arrogated to themselves the
National Representation, took advantage of the dispositions
which the good faith, distance, oppression, and ignorance, created
in the Americans, against the new Dynasty that had entered
Spain by means of force; and, contrary to their own
principles, they sustained amongst us the illusion in favour of
Ferdinand, in order to devour and harass us with impunity: at
most, they promised to us liberty, equality, and fraternity, conveyed
in pompous discourses and studied phrases, for the purpose
of covering the snare laid by a cunning, useless, and degrading
Representation.
As soon as they were dissolved, and had substituted and de-
stroyed amongst themselves the various forms of the Government
of Spain; and as soon as the imperious law of necessity
had dictated to Venezuela the urgency of preserving itself, in
order to guard and maintain the rights of her King, and to offer
an asylum to her European brethren against the ills that threatened
them; their former conduct was divulged: they varied
their principles, and gave their appellations of insurrection,
perfidy, and ingratitude, to the same acts that had served as
models for the Governments of Spain; because then was closed
to them the gate to the monopoly of administration, which they
meant to perpetuate, under the name of an imaginary King.
Notwithstanding our protests, our moderation, generosity,
and the inviolability of our principles, contrary to the wishes of
our brethren in Europe, we were declared in a state of rebellion;
we were blockaded; war was declared against us; agents
were sent amongst us, to excite us one against the other, endeavouring
to take away our credit with the other Nations of
Europe, by imploring their assistance to oppress us.
Without taking the least notice of our reasons, without presenting
them to the impartial judgment of the world, and without
any other judges than our own enemies, we are condemned
to a mournful incommunication with our brethren; and, to
add contempt to calumny, empowered agents are named for us
against our own express will, that in their Cortes they may arbitrarily
dispose of our interests, under the influence and force
of our enemies.
In order to crush and suppress the effects of our Representation,
when they were obliged to grant it to us, we were submitted
to a paltry and diminutive scale; and the form of election
was subjected to the passive voice of the Municipal Bodies, degraded
by the despotism of the Governors: which amounted to
an insult to our plain dealing and good faith, more than a consideration
of our incontestable political importance.
Always deaf to the cries of justice on our part, the Governments
of Spain have endeavoured to discredit all our efforts, by
declaring us criminal, and stamping with infamy, and rewarding
with the scaffold and confiscation, every attempt, which at different
periods some Americans have made, for the felicity of
their country: as was that which lately our own security dictated
to us, that we might not be driven into a state of disorder
which we foresaw, and hurried to that horrid fate which we are
about to remove for ever from before us. By means of such
atrocious policy, they have succeeded in making our brethren
insensible to our misfortunes; in arming them against us; in
erasing from their bosoms the sweet impressions of friendship,
of consanguinity; and converting into enemies a part of our
own great family.
At a time that we, faithful to our promises, were sacrificing
our security and civil dignity, not to abandon the rights which
we have generously preserved to Ferdinand of Bourbon, we
have seen that, to the relations of force which bound him to the
Emperor of the French, he has added the ties of blood and
friendship; in consequence of which, even the Governments of
Spain have already declared their resolution only to acknowledge
him conditionally.
In this mournful alternative we have remained three years,
in a state of political indecision and ambiguity, so fatal and dangerous,
that this alone would suffice to authorise the resolution,
which the faith of our promises and the bonds of fraternity had
caused us to defer, till necessity has obliged us to go beyond
what we at first proposed, impelled by the hostile and unnatural
conduct of the Governments of Spain, which have disburdened
us of our conditional oath, by which circumstance, we
are called to the august representation we now exercise.
But we, who glory in grounding our proceedings on better
principles, and not wishing to establish our felicity on the
misfortunes of our fellow-beings, do consider and declare as
friends, companions of our fate, and participators of our felicity
those who, united to us by the ties of blood, language, and religion,
have suffered the same evils in the anterior order of
things, provided they acknowledge our absolute independence of
the same, and of any other foreign power whatever; and that
they aid us to sustain it with their lives, fortune, and sentiments;
declaring and acknowledging them (as well as to every
other nation,) in war enemies, and in peace friends, brothers,
and co-patriots.
In consequence of all these solid, public, and incontestible
reasons of policy, which so powerfully urge the necessity of recovering
our natural dignity, restored to us by the order of
events; and in compliance with the imprescriptible rights enjoyed
by nations, to destroy every pact, agreement, or association,
which does not answer the purposes for which governments
were established; we believe that we cannot, nor ought
not, to preserve the bonds which hitherto kept us united to the
Government of Spain: and that, like all the other nations of the
world, we are free, and authorised not to depend on any other
authority than our own, and to take amongst the powers of the
earth the place of equality which the Supreme Being and Nature
assign to us, and to which we are called by the succession
of human events, and urged by our own good and utility.
Notwithstanding we are aware of the difficulties that attend,
and the obligations imposed upon us, by the rank we are about
to take in the political order of the world; as well as the powerful
influence of forms and habitudes, to which unfortunately
we have been accustomed: we at the same time know, that the
shameful submission to them, when we can throw them off,
would be still more ignominious for us, and more fatal to our
posterity, than our long and painful slavery; and that it now becomes
an indispensable duty to provide for our preservation,
security, and felicity, by essentially varying all the forms of our
former constitution.
In consequence whereof, considering, by the reasons thus
alledged, that we have satisfied the respect which we owe to the
opinions of the human race, and the dignity of other nations, in
the number of whom we are about to enter, and on whose
communication and friendship we rely: We, the Representatives
of the United Provinces of Venezuela, calling on the SUPREME
BEING to witness the justice of our proceedings and
the rectitude of our intentions, do implore his divine and celestial
help; and ratifying, at the moment in which we are born to
the dignity to which his Providence restores to us, the desire
we have of living and dying free, and of believing and defending
the holy Catholic and Apostolic Religion of Jesus Christ. We,
therefore, in the name and by the will and authority which we
hold from the virtuous People of Venezuela, DO declare solemnly
to the world, that its united Provinces are, and ought to
be, from this day, by act and right, Free, Sovereign and Independent
States; and that they are absolved from every submission
and dependence on the Throne of Spain, or on those who
do, or may call themselves, its Agents and Representatives; and
that a free and independent State, thus constituted, has full
power to take that form of Government which may be conformable
to the general will of the People, to declare war,
make peace, form alliances, regulate treaties of commerce, limits,
and navigation; and to do and transact every act, in like manner
as other free and independent States. And that this, our solemn
Declaration, may be held valid, firm, and durable, we
hereby pledge our lives, fortunes, and the sacred tie of our national
honour. Done in the Federal Palace of Caracas; signed by
our own hands, sealed with the great Provisional Seal of the
Confederation, and countersigned by the Secretary to the Congress,
on the 5th day of July, 1811, the first of our Independence.
Source: Interesting Official Documents Relating to The United Provinces of Venezuela
(London, 1812), 3–19.