James Otis Jr.

“ The end of government being the good of mankind points out its great duties: it is above all things to provide for the security, the quiet, and happy enjoyment of life, liberty, and property. There is no one act which a government can have a right to make that does not tend to the advancement of the security, tranquillity, and prosperity of the people. If life, liberty, and property could be enjoyed in as great perfection in solitude as in society there would be no need of government. ”

“ Are they not British subjects? Are not an infinity of commodities carried from hence for the benefit of the realm, for which in return come an infinity of trifles which we could do without? Manufactures we must go into if our trade is cut off; our country is too cold to go naked in, and we shall soon be unable to make returns to England even for necessaries.
"When any law or custom of Parliament is broken, and the crown possessed of a precedent, how difficult a thing is it to restore the subject again to his former freedom and safety?" ”

“ Why not the produce of our lands and everything we possess or make use of? This we apprehend annihilates our charter right to govern and tax ourselves. It strikes at our British privileges, which, as we have never forfeited them, we hold in common with our fellow subjects who are natives of Britain: if taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves? ”

“ If I were to define the modern colonists, I should say they are the noble discoverers and settlers of a new world, from whence as from an endless source, wealth and plenty, the means of power, grandeur, and glory, in a degree unknown to the hungry chiefs of former ages, have been pouring into Europe for 300 years past in return for which those colonists have received from the several states of Europe, except from Great Britain only since the Revolution, nothing but ill-usage, slavery, and chains, as fast as the riches of their own earning could furnish the means of forging them. ”

“ I think every man has a right to examine as freely into the origin, spring, and foundation of every power and measure in a commonwealth as into a piece of curious machinery or a remarkable phenomenon in nature, and that it ought to give no more offense to say the Parliament have erred or are mistaken in a matter of fact or of right than to say it of a private man, if it is true of both. ”

“ If every man has such right, may there not be as many original compacts as there are men and women born or to be born? Are not women born as free as men? Would it not be infamous to assert that the ladies are all slaves by nature? If every man and woman born or to be born has and will have a right to be consulted and must accede to the original compact before they can with any kind of justice be said to be bound by it, will not the compact be ever forming and never finished, ever making but never done? ”

“ We are always to remember that the law of nature permits no injury to be done to an enemy unless in taking measures necessary for a just defense and a reasonable security. Some princes have only imposed a tribute on it; others have been satisfied of stripping it of some privileges, dismembering a province, or keeping it in awe by fortresses; others, as their quarrel was only with the sovereign in person, have left a nation in the full enjoyment of all its rights, only setting a sovereign over it. ”

“ I conceive the spirit of the British constitution must make an exception of all taxes, until it is thought fit to unite a dominion to the realm. Such taxation must be considered either as uniting the dominions to the realm or disfranchising them. If they are united they will be entitled to a representation as well as Wales; if they are so taxed without a union or representation, they are so far disfranchised. ”

“ We all think ourselves happy under Great Britain. We love, esteem, and reverence our mother country, and adore our King. And could the choice of independency be offered the colonies or subjection to Great Britain upon any terms above absolute slavery, I am convinced they would accept the latter. The ministry in all future generations may rely on it that British America will never prove undutiful till driven to it as the last fatal resort against ministerial oppression, which will make the wisest mad, and the weakest strong. ”

“ Nothing better can be said in favor of a trade that is the most shocking violation of the law of nature, has a direct tendency to diminish the idea of the inestimable value of liberty, and makes every dealer in it a tyrant, from the director of an African company to the petty chapman in needles and pins on the unhappy coast. It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own. ”

“ Is it not a first principle of the original compact that all who are bound should bind themselves? Will not common sense without much learning or study dictate obvious answers to all the above questions? And, say the opposers of the original compact and of the natural equality and liberty of mankind, will not those answers infallibly show that the doctrine is a piece of metaphysicaljargon and systematical nonsense? ”

“ That you will endeavor as far as you shall be able to preserve that independence in the House of Representatives which characterizes a free people, and the want of which may in a great measure prevent the happy effects of a free government: cultivating as you shall have opportunity that harmony and union there which is ever desirable to good men when founded in principles of virtue and public spirit, and guarding against any undue weight which may tend to dis-adjust that critical balance upon which our happy constitution and the blessings of it do depend. ”

“ What higher revolt can there be than for a province to assume the right of an independent legislative or state? I must therefore think this a greater aspersion on the colonists than to charge them with a design to revolt in the sense in which the gentleman allows they have been abused: it is a more artful and dangerous way of attacking our liberties than to charge us with being in open rebellion. That could be confuted instantly: but this seeming indirect way of charging the colonies with a desire of throwing off their dependency requires more pains to confute it than the other ”

“ Let no man think I am about to commence advocate for despotism because I affirm that government is founded on the necessity of our natures and that an original supreme, sovereign, absolute, and uncontrollable earthly power must exist in and preside over every society, from whose final decisions there can be no appeal but directly to Heaven. ”

“ The same law of nature and of reason is equally obligatory on a democracy, an aristocracy, and a monarchy: whenever the administrators in any of those forms deviate from truth, justice, and equity, they verge towards tyranny, and are to be opposed; and if they prove incorrigible they will be deposed by the people, if the people are not rendered too abject. Deposing the administrators of a simple democracy may sound oddly, but it is done every day and in almost every vote. ”

“ A continuation of the same liberties that have been enjoyed by the colonists since the Revolution, and the same moderation of government exercised towards them will bind them in perpetual lawful and willing subjection, obedience, and love to Great Britain she and her colonies will both prosper and flourish. The monarchy will remain in sound health and full vigor at that blessed period when the proud arbitrary tyrants of the continent shall either unite in the deliverance of the human race or resign their crowns. ”

“ If the reasons that can be given against an act are such as plainly demonstrate that it is against natural equity, the executive courts will adjudge such act void. It may be questioned by some, though I make no doubt of it, whether they are not obliged by their oaths to adjudge such act void. If there is not a right of private judgment to be exercised, so far at least as to petition for a repeal or to determine the expediency of risking a trial at law, the Parliament might make itself arbitrary, which it is conceived it cannot by the constitution. ”

“ I cannot but observe here that if the Parliament have an equitable right to tax our trade, 'tis indisputable that they have as good an one to tax the lands and everything else. The taxing trade furnishes one reason why the other should be taxed, or else the burdens of the province will be unequally borne, upon a supposition that a tax on trade is not a tax on the whole. But take it either way, there is no foundation for the distinction some make in England between an internal and an external tax on the colonies. ”

“ All the manufactures that Great Britain could make would be consumed in America and in her own plantations if put on a right footing, for which a greater profit in return would be made than she will ever see again for woolen sent to any part of Europe.
But though it be allowed that liberty may be enjoyed in a comfortable measure where prohibitions are laid on the trade of a kingdom or province, yet if taxes are laid on either without consent, they cannot be said to be free. This barrier of liberty being once broken down, all is lost. ”

“ For no man or society of men having a power to deliver up their preservation or consequently the means of it to the absolute will and arbitrary dominion of another, whenever anyone shall go about to bring them into such a slavish condition, they will always have a right to preserve what they have not a power to part with, and to rid themselves of those who invade this fundamental, sacred, and unalterable law of self-preservation for which they entered into society. ”

“ This will answer in small numbers; so will a tolerably virtuous oligarchy or a monarchy. But when the society grows in bulk none of them will answer well singly, and none worse than absolute monarchy. It becomes necessary therefore as numbers increase to have those several powers properly combined, so as from the whole to produce that harmony of government so often talked of and wished for but too seldom found in ancient or modern states. The grand political problem in all ages has been to invent the best combination or distribution of the supreme powers of legislation and execution. ”

“ Government is therefore most evidently founded on the necessities of our nature. It is by no means an arbitrary thing depending merely on compact or human will for its existence.
We come into the world forlorn and helpless; and if left alone and to ourselves at any one period of our lives, we should soon die in want, despair, or distraction. ”

“ So kind is that hand, though little known or regarded, which feeds the rich and the poor, the blind and the naked, and provides for the safety of infants by the principle of parental love, and for that of men by government! We have a King who neither slumbers nor sleeps, but eternally watches for our good, whose rain falls on the just and on the unjust: yet while they live, move, and have their being in Him, and cannot account for either or for anything else, so stupid and wicked are some men as to deny his existence, blaspheme his most evident government, and disgrace their nature. ”

“ For what one civil right is worth a rush after a man's property is subject to be taken from him at pleasure without his consent? If a man is not his own assessor in person or by deputy, his liberty is gone or lays intirely at the mercy of others.
I think I have heard it said that when the Dutch are asked why they enslave their colonies, their answer is that the liberty of Dutchmen is confined to Holland, and that it was never intended for provincials in America or anywhere else. ”

“ The truth is, as has been shown, men come into the world and into society at the same instant. But this hinders not but that the natural and original rights of each individual may be illustrated and explained in this way better than in any other. We see here, by the way, a probability that this abstract consideration of men, which has its use in reasoning on the principles of government, has insensibly led some of the greatest men to imagine some real general state of nature agreeable to this abstract conception, antecedent to and independent of society. ”

“ The first of these opinions is so absurd, and the world has paid so very dear for embracing it, especially under the administration of the Roman pontiffs, that mankind seem at this day to be in a great measure cured of their madness in this particular, and the notion is pretty generally exploded and hissed off the stage.
To those who lay the foundation of government in force and mere brutal power it is objected that their system destroys all distinction between right and wrong; that it overturns all morality, and leaves it to every man to do what is right in his own eyes ”

“ If I have one ambitious wish, 'tis to see Great Britain at the head of the world, and to see my King, under God, the father of mankind. I pretend neither to the spirit of prophecy nor any uncommon skill in predicting a crisis, much less to tell when it begins to be "nascent" or is fairly midwived into the world. ”