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"There is nothing that will destroy liberty more than a prevailing opinion that it is better tamely to submit than nobly assert and vindicate our privileges." -- James Otis, Jr.
A Boston lawyer, legislator and pamphleteer, Otis (1725-1783) was the catalyst for the American Colonies' pre-revolutionary movement of the 1760s, a decade ahead of their break from Great Britain. His position that "taxation without representation is tyranny" became a rallying cry, as Otis argued that principle and laid out a number of other colonial grievances against the British government.
As John Adams told it, the American Revolution didn’t start in Philadelphia, or at Lexington and Concord. Instead, the second president traced the nation’s birth to February 24, 1761, when James Otis, Jr., rose in Boston’s Massachusetts Town House to defend American liberty.
That day, as five red-robed judges—and a rapt, 25-year-old Adams—listened, Otis delivered a five-hour oration against the Writs of Assistance, sweeping warrants that allowed British customs officials to search any place, anytime, for evidence of smuggling.
“It appears to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power,” argued Otis, “the most destructive of English liberty…that was ever found in an English law-book.” Until this case, the 36-year-old lawyer had been Massachusetts’ advocate general. But he resigned rather than defend the writs, then agreed to provide pro bono representation to the merchants fighting against them. Inside the courtroom, Otis denounced the British king, parliament, and nation as oppressors of the American colonies—electrifying spectators.
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