The Declaration states that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it . . .” This means that, according to the creators of the Declaration, the main purpose of government was to protect and uphold the rights of citizens. If a government fails the people it governs, those people have the right to rebel and overthrow the government. The colonists included a long list of grievances they had with British rule. These included unfair taxes and no representation in British Parliament. To the colonists, their treatment at the hands of the British government was an abuse of power that gave them the justification to break away and form their own government.
Plato