The grievances list comprised over two-thirds of the final Declaration text

Evidence

All told, even after Congress cut nearly 500 words of text from Jefferson’s litany of grievances, it still made up more than two-thirds of the Declaration of Independence. “The history of the present King of Great Britain,” it stated, “is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” Read aloud to groups or silently alone in a revolutionary era, the rat-a-tat-tat style of this part had the cumulative effect of a boxer’s repeated jabs for colonists who felt the sting of each grievance from personal experience or shared knowledge. Later generations tended to find this second part less relevant than the other two but, in Jefferson’s day, it served as a crucial bridge between the Declaration’s inspired and inspiring opening and its determined and decisive conclusion. — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 214