Collected Political Writings of James Otis

Collected Political Writings [ of James Otis ] James Otis Collected Political Writings of James Otis edited and with an introduction [ by Richard Samuelson ] liberty fund | Indianapolis This book is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a foundation established to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. The cuneiform inscription that serves as our logo and as the design motif for our endpapers is the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” ( amagi ), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 b.c. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash. Compilation, introduction, translations, editorial additions, and index © 2015 by Liberty Fund, Inc. Frontispiece: Portrait of James Otis, Jr., by Joseph Blackburn, oil on canvas, 1755. Courtesy of the Frick Art Reference Library. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 19 18 17 16 15 c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Otis, James, 1725–1783. [Works. Selections] Collected political writings of James Otis/edited and with an introduction by Richard Samuelson. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-61487-270-2 (ePub)—isbn 978-1-61487-646-5 (MOBI)— isbn 978-1-61487-916-9 (PDF) 1. Otis, James, 1725–1783—Archives. 2. Statesmen—United States— Archives. 3. Legislators—Massachusetts—Archives. 4. Lawyers— Massachusetts—Boston—Archives. 5. United States—History— Revolution, 1775–1783—Sources. 6. Massachusetts—History—Revolution, 1775–1783—Sources. 7. United States—Politics and government—To 1775—Sources. 8. United States—Politics and government—1775–1783— Sources. 9. Massachusetts—Politics and government—1775–1783— Sources. I. Samuelson, Richard A. (Richard Adam) II. Title. e302.o82 2015 973.311092—dc23 2015000933 Liberty Fund, Inc. 8335 Allison Pointe Trail, Suite 300 Indianapolis, Indiana 46250-1684 [ contents ] Introduction: The Life, Times, and Political Writings of James Otis [ vii ] A Note on the Texts [ xvii ] Chronology of the Life [ xxi ] Acknowledgments [ xxiii ] part 1: The Writs of Assistance Case [ 1 ] 1. John Adams’s Notes on the First Argument of the Case, February 1761 [ 5 ] 2. Josiah Quincy Jr.’s Notes on the Second Argument of the Case, November 1761 [ 8 ] 3. John Adams’s Reconstruction of Otis’s Speech in the Writs of Assistance Case [ 11 ] 4. Essay on the Writs of Assistance Case, Boston Gazette , January 4, 1762 [ 15 ] 5. A Sample Writ of Assistance [ 19 ] part 2: Massachusetts Politics, 1761–63 [ 21 ] 1. Essays from the Boston Gazette , December 21, 1761– April 11, 1763 [ 25 ] December 21, 1761 [ 25 ] December 28, 1761 [ 29 ] January 11, 1762 [ 37 ] January 11, 1762 (supplement) [ 42 ] January 31, 1763 [ 54 ] February 28, 1763 [ 56 ] March 21, 1763 [ 62 ] April 4, 1763 [ 64 ] April 11, 1763 [ 69 ] 2. A Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives of the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay [ 75 ] [ vi ] contents part 3: The Imperial Crisis, 1764–67 [ 113 ] 1. The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved [ 119 ] 2. A Vindication of the British Colonies [ 183 ] 3. Brief Remarks on the Defence of the Halifax Libel on the British-American- Colonies [ 209 ] 4. The Boston Gazette, May 13, 1765 [ 235 ] 5. Considerations on Behalf of the Colonists. In a Letter to a Noble Lord [ 238 ] 6. The Boston Gazette, August 19 and 26, 1765, Responding to Criticisms of Noble Lord [ 260 ] 7. John Hampden to William Pym Essays from the Boston Gazette [ 264 ] December 9, 1765 [ 264 ] December 16, 1765 [ 267 ] December 23, 1765 [ 272 ] December 30, 1765 [ 275 ] January 6, 1766 [ 278 ] January 13, 1766 [ 283 ] January 20, 1766 [ 287 ] January 27, 1766 [ 290 ] November 24, 1766 [ 295 ] December 1, 1766 [ 300 ] 8. Freeborn American / Freeborn Armstrong Essays in the Boston Gazette [ 307 ] January 27, 1766 [ 307 ] February 3, 1766 [ 308 ] March 10, 1766 [ 311 ] March 17, 1766 [ 315 ] February 9, 1767 [ 316 ] March 9, 1767 [ 320 ] April 27, 1767 [ 324 ] 9. November 1767 Essay in the Boston Gazette [ 333 ] Bibliography [ 335 ] Index [ 337 ] [ introduction ] The Life, Times, and Political Writings of James Otis History remembers James Otis Jr. (1725–83) for three things. 1 According to John Adams, Otis’s argument in the Writs of Assistance case of 1761 “began the revolution in the principles, views, opinions, and feelings of the Ameri- can people.” 2 By asking the court to render a law “void,” Otis also presaged our modern ideas of judicial review. In addition, Otis is remembered for his intellectual and political leadership of the colonial cause in the 1760s. He wrote some of the most infl uential essays in opposition to the Stamp Act and coined the phrase “taxation without representation is tyranny.” The Stamp Act Congress was his idea. Finally, Otis is remembered as “crazy James.” In the late 1760s Otis gradually lost his mental composure, and was ultimately exiled from Boston to the countryside. Otis was not so consistent a patriot as Samuel Adams or Patrick Henry, and he could be violent in political combat, leading to speculation that his mental instability had something to do with his political inconstancy and his passionate outbursts against his enemies. All of Otis’s claims to fame—his argument in the Writs case, his revolutionary writings, his intemperance, and his rhetorical or real inconstancy—can be seen in this volume of his writings. This volume has three parts, containing Otis’s writings on the Writs of Assistance case, on intracolonial matters in Massachusetts in the early 1760s, and on the dispute between Anglo-America and Great Britain of the 1760s, in addition to a few other newspaper essays from Otis’s pen. As a whole, these texts represent the vast majority of Otis’s identifi able political writings. James Otis, Jr., was born in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in 1725 to James and Mary Allyne Otis. The Otises were an old Plymouth family of 1 . To write the biographical parts of this introduction, we have drawn from “James Otis,” in Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Those Who Attended Harvard College, 247–87, in addition to the other sources listed in the bibliography. 2 . Adams to J. Morse, November 29, 1815, in Adams, Works, 10: 182. [ vii ] [ viii ] introduction some distinction. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Otises had been known to sit on the Massachusetts council. His father, Colonel Otis, was a second son. As such, he inherited fewer claims to power and place than did his elder brother. One could say the same about the Otis family’s place of origin. Barnstable was in Plymouth. Although it was founded fi rst, Plymouth had long played second fi ddle to the Massachusetts colony, a trend that continued after the colonies were merged into the colony of Massachusetts Bay in 1691. Colo- nel Otis was a successful self-taught lawyer and politician. He rose to become speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and ultimately to a seat on the colony’s council. The elder James Otis rose through grim determination, penny counting, and deal making. The powers that be in Massachusetts some- times regarded him as a bit of a political hack, and treated him accordingly. His eldest son and namesake sought to lead a more gentlemanly life. Jemmy, as young James Otis was known, sought refi nement in the repub- lic of letters. He appears to have been an indifferent student as a youth, doing not much more than was required of him to enter Harvard College in 1739. When the Great Awakening hit the college in 1740–41, it energized young Otis, fi rst in religion, but ultimately in study. Once lit, the fi re of study burned in him to the end of his days. Determined to recover lost time, Otis locked himself up in his study. One day Jemmy’s classmates dragged him from his books and demanded that he play his fi ddle so that they might dance. After complying, Otis halted abruptly and exclaimed, “So Orpheus fi ddled, and so danced the brutes,” and ran off. A young man’s time was bet- ter spent with his books than at the dance. The college honored Otis with a speaking part at his graduation in 1743. After leaving Harvard, Otis devoted himself to further study. In time, he would write a treatise on Latin prosody and another on Greek prosody. He published the former in 1760 but, as the colonies lacked the equipment to print Greek, he never published the latter, and ultimately destroyed the manuscript. When the time came to choose a profession, Otis turned to law. Law school not having been invented yet, students in Otis’s day learned the law as apprentices to members of the bar. Otis studied under the tutelage of Jeremy Gridley, the leading lawyer of the colony, and the most philosophical member of its bar. According to Gridley, law was a moral discipline. “It was a favorite saying of Gridley that a lawyer ought never to be without a book of moral philosophy on his table,” John Adams wrote. 3 Members of the bar 3 . John Adams to Richard Rush, April 14, 1811, “Some Unpublished Correspondence of John Adams and Richard Rush, 1811–1816,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biog- raphy 55 (1936): 433. introduction [ ix ] understood themselves to be servants of the law. And law, they thought, tethered communal standards of right to a higher law. That was the law to which Otis was attached when he joined the bar in 1748. Otis rose quickly. He was a diligent student, and soon became deeply learned in the law.

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