The D of I shows the steps to valid secession and that secession:
1) should not be “for light or transient causes”
2) requires a certain “patient sufferance” while “evils are sufferable”
3) involves notifying and submitting the facts of abuse “to a candid world” (27 specific abuses are listed in the D of I) and finally
4) “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.”
Your post 365 was long, but not quite long enough.
When searching the DOI for guidance on secession, I encourage you to consider this language: “That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, AS TO THEM shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” (emphasis added)
This DOI theory does not require the permission of the King, or the Prime Minister, or the President of the Empire, or even an affirmative vote of the U.N. General Assembly for people to secede.
Yes, this is controversial. Yes, it is something Americans celebrate only once a year on July 4 and then - for the most part - only by lip service.
And yes, it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
“That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, AS TO THEM shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
That is an eloquent statement of natural law which I did not include because although important, it is general background of natural law principles. It is a statement of the right of a people to secede from its government. What follows is the application of this general right of secession to the issue of and justification for valid American colonial secession, which I included.
The application flows from this statement of natural law, it does not conflict with it.