Chapter 13 |
HOW JAMES OTIS BECAME A "FLAME OF FIRE."
In the year 1745 —the very year in which the great fortress of Louisburg surrendered to the army of Massachusetts farmers and fishermen—a young man of twenty came to Boston to enter the law office of Jeremiah Gridley, a famous Boston lawyer. He was James Otis, the eldest son of Colonel Otis of Barnstable, "down on the Cape." Even in those days Massachusetts was still largely rural. As late as 1 760 her population was only about two hundred thousand. The towns were small and scattered, and Boston, with its population of twenty thousand, was the nearest approach to a city. To it young men of ambition turned as the place to make their fortunes, while even those who left it "for distant parts" aver cherished for it a love and a longing which remains with its sons and daughters to this day. One such young man, born on Milk Street, opposite: he now famous Old South Meetinghouse, in 1706, had run away as a boy, seeking fame and fortune; but, as soon as he had gained the footing which finally brought 109 |
110 him to greatness in far-off Philadelphia, he made it a rule to return every ten years for a visit to his dearly loved Boston and the Old South Meeting-house. And Boston boys still profit by the fund left to his native town, as a token of his love and generosity, by Benjamin Franklin, Boston born, though a citizen of Philadelphia. In 1745, when James Otis came to Boston, that other" old Boston boy," Benjamin Franklin,—patriot, philosopher, and leader,—was the best known man, in all America and the best known American in all the world. Massachusetts boys, in 1745, already knew the story of Benjamin Franklin, for they read "Poor Richard’s Almanac," if they read nothing else. And "Poor Richard’s Almanac" was Franklin’s yearly contribution for the good and welfare of his country men. No other book or publication of the day did so much toward making them thinking, frugal, and independent Americans. But young James Otis read many other things, for he was quite a scholar. He was, for that day, excellently educated. He had graduated from Harvard at eighteen, and, as I have said, at twenty went to Boston |
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111 to study law in Mr. Gridley’s office. When this schooling was over he set up for himself as a lawyer in old Plymouth of the Pilgrims. But again Boston, with its wider opportunities, drew him away from the pleasant South shore, and, returning to Boston, he rapidly found fame and practice and came to be counted throughout the colonies as the brightest lawyer in Boston.But things were coming to pass in all the colonies which proved more absorbing than law practice, and which, because they centered themselves largely in Boston, made that growing seaport the scene of exciting and now historic happenings. Flushed with victory but burdened with debt, the government of Great Britain insisted that, as America had benefited by the conquest of Canada, America should pay the bills. America had spent a good deal of her own money in the half century of war with France, but she was willing to help pay England’s war bills if she might "audit the accounts," and have something to say as to the raising and spending of the money, which, of course, could-be obtained only in the shape of taxes or duties. But all this business England took into her own hands. The British government said the colonies had and could have nothing to say as to the method of raising and the manner of spending the money they must raise. "They must just pay and keep quiet," England declared, and at once set about arranging things so as successfully to "squeeze the colonies" for money. Of course she went at it in the wrong way. Half the trouble in the world has been caused by governments |
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112 blundering into tyranny. The British government made all possible trouble by permitting a powerful English organization, known as the Board of Trade, to "regulate colonial commerce." This meant burdening American commerce with excessive fines and dues; it meant that the Board of Trade was to make England’s colonies contribute to England’s wealth, no matter at what hardship to the colonies; or, in other words, as one historian has stated it, "the Englishman in America was to be employed in making the fortune of the Englishman at home."But the Englishman in America had a mind of his own. It was one in which was fast growing a love of personal and political liberty that was only withheld from breaking out into action by the affection which the colonists held for the dear motherland across the sea— England, the home of those who had opened up America. It was thus that two parties were formed in America—those who believed in the supremacy of the crown, and those who believed in the supremacy of the people. There was one thing that the merchants of Massachusetts did do—they snapped their fingers at the Board of Trade and at the British government when told that they, the colonies, would be allowed to trade with England only; they proceeded to do all the trading they could with England’s other colonies, especially those in the West Indies. This nonsensical English law, by establishing what is called a "prohibitory tariff," tried to prevent the New England merchants from buying their sugar and molasses in the West Indies; and West India sugar and molasses were precisely what New England most needed, |
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113 and certainly intended to have without paying the heavy tariff or customhouse charges put upon them. This meant that they got much of the "sweet stuffs" into Boston and other Massachusetts ports without paying duties, whenever they could thus smuggle them in. Governor Bernard, whom the King of England had sent to govern Massachusetts, told the merchants of Massachusetts that they must stop this West India trade. But the merchants kept it up just the same. Then Governor Bernard joined hands with the customhouse officers in trying to stop this unlawful trade, and, as one means to the end, issued what were called writs of assistance. Now, a writ of assistance was a law paper duly signed and issued, authorizing the holder, as an officer of the king, to enter and search any house in which he supposed sugar or molasses had been hidden and to seize them as contraband. If the king’s officer could not do this alone the writ empowered him to call on the bystanders for assistance, and they were bound to help. This was allowable in England. But while it was good enough law, it was very poor policy, and it led to something much more important than sugar or molasses. James Otis, the boy from Cape Cod, had risen high in the law after he had became a Bostonian. He had been appointed king’s advocate—what one would now call attorney-general of the province. As king’s advocate it was his duty to apply to the court for writs of assistance when needed. But James Otis loved liberty and justice and political freedom too dearly to do anything, however lawful it might be, |
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In the old Statehouse on Washington Street, at the head of State Street in Boston, you may see today the room in which James Otis, late the king’s advocate, now the people’s advocate, came from his home in Court Street to argue before the superior Court of Massachusetts the cause of the people, and, doing so, made on a February day in 1761 an historic speech against issuing the writs of assistance.He failed, and yet he conquered. The chief justice, Thomas Hutchinson,—a descendant, by the way, of that same famous Mrs. Anne Hutchinson whom the ministers of the Bay colony drove into exile,—ruled against Otis, because the bewigged and robed chief justice was a king’s man and had the law on his side. But James Otis’s impassioned speech on that famous February day |
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115 was really a writ of assistance for liberty—something vastly more important than a hunt for smuggled sugar or hidden molasses. In that room in the old Statehouse, then known as the townhouse, there was a young man of twenty-five, who had come to town from a plain little Braintree farmhouse, still standing in what is now the city of Quincy. This young man’s name was John Adams. He was no longer a farmer’s boy. He had graduated from Harvard, and had just been admitted to the bar as a Worcester lawyer. He had come up to Boston and had followed the crowd that thronged the townhouse to hear what Mr. Otis might have to say about the writs of assistance. He heard enough to set his soul on fire and make a patriot of him. James Otis arose, and as he argued against the tyranny of those writs as not only unjust but as an invasion of the rights of the people, his feelings carried him away; his voice rang out in bold and eloquent protest, expressing the same defiance to kingly authority that, not long after, Patrick Henry gave in a similar case in Virginia. "I am determined, sir, to my dying day," said James Otis, "to oppose with all the powers and faculties God has given me all such instruments of slavery on the one hand and villainy on the other as this writ of assistance is. . . . I oppose that kind of power the exercise of which, in former periods of English history, cost one king of England his head and another his throne."These were bold words for a British subject. They |
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116 made young John Adams open his eyes; they thrilled him with the fervor of freedom. But Otis went still further. He argued that the writs were tyranny; that they were illegal; and he laid down the astonishing doctrine that later had place in the very opening of the Declaration of Independence, that every man was an "independent sovereign," and that his right to life, liberty, and property "were inherent and inalienable," which "no created being could rightfully contest." And as, in closing, lie repeated his statement that the writs of assistance were " unjust, oppressive, and impracticable," he also declared that they never could be executed."If the King of England in person," he declared, "were encamped on Boston Common, at the head of twenty thousand men, with all his navy on our coast, he would not be able to execute these laws. They would be resisted or eluded." In short, as John Adams said of Otis many years after, recalling this remarkable scene, "he reproached the nation, Parliament, and king with injustice, illiberality, ingratitude, and oppression, in their conduct toward the people of this country, in a style of oratory that I never heard equaled in this or any other country." No wonder that the young man marveled as he listened or that the old man grew enthusiastic as he recalled the scene. That speech of James Otis’s fell upon men’s ears like the trumpet call of freedom. To young John Adams it was, so his grandson tells us, "like the oath of Hamilcar to the boy Hannibal." And old John Adams, in a flood of recollections, de |
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117 clared" Otis was a flame of fire; . . . with a prophetic glance into futurity and a rapid torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried all before him. The seeds of patriots and heroes were then and there sowed. Every man appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take up arms against writs of assistance. Then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born. In fifteen years—that is, in 1776—he grew to manhood and declared himself free."A speech that stirs men to passion often works great harm; but one that arouses the righteous indignation of men and leads them to think, to talk, and to protest is a prime mover toward great acts and greater results. Such a speech was that by James Otis. It made patriots; and as men repeated the words to others, or themselves pondered over them, they felt that a new day was dawning for America, and that a crisis was at hand which each man in Massachusetts—and in all the colonies—must meet and face, to side either with king or with colonists, to yield to tyranny. or manfully oppose it. |