America," imposing duties on glass, paper, painters' colors and tea; and by virtue of another act, the king was empowered to put the customs and other duties in America, and the execution of the laws relating to trade in the colonies, under the management of resident commissioners. The news of the passage of these bills revived the popular excitement which arose at the time of the Stamp Act, which had died away on its repeal. A town meeting was held in Boston, at which Mr. Otis appeared, "contrary to his usual practice, as the adviser of cautious and moderate proceedings," for which moderation he was charged with being a friend to the act for appointing commissioners. To this charge he replied, "If the name and office of Commissioner General imports no more than that of a Surveyor General, no man of sense will contend about a name. The tax-the tax is undoubtedly, at present, the apparent matter of grievance." At this meeting resolutions were passed to encourage the manufactures of the province, and to abstain from the purchase of articles on which duties were imposed, thus deceiving Bernard, the governor, by the quiet character of their proceedings, which were represented as "the last efforts of an expiring faction," but at the same time becoming more firm and decided. To all the movements of the king and ministry to abridge the liberties of the colonists, Otis maintained a decided and fearless opposition. Bold and daring in the expression of his principles and opinions, he sometimes gave utterance to unguarded epithets, but never employed his gift of irony and sarcasm in a spirit of hatred towards the masses of mankind. Owing to a severe refutation of some strictures upon him, published in the public papers in 1769, he was attacked by one John Robinson, a commissioner of the customs, in a coffee-house in Boston, and in a general affray was cruelly wounded; from the effects of which he never recovered. His wounds did not prove mortal, but his reason was shattered, and his great usefulness to his country destroyed. He gained heavy damages for the assault; but in an interval of returning reason he forgave his destroyer and remitted the judgment. He lived until May 28, 1783. On that day, during a heavy thunder-storm, he, with a greater part of the family with whom he resided, had entered the house to wait until the shower should have passed. Otis, with his cane in one hand, stood against the part of a door which opened into the front entry, and was in the act of telling the assembled group a story, when an explosion took place, which seemed to shake the solid earth, and he fell without a struggle, or an utterance, instantaneously dead. He had often expressed a desire to die as he did. In one of his lucid intervals, a few weeks previous to his death, he said to his sister: "I hope, when God Almighty, in his righteous providence, shail take me out of time into eternity, that it will be by a flash of lightning." He lived to see the Independence of the Colonies, but never fully to enjoy it. "When the glorious work which he begun, In storms as loud as his immortal fame!' Hark! the deep thunders echo round the skies! On wings of flame the eternal errand flies; One chosen, charitable bolt is sped And Otis mingles with the glorious dead."-Dawes. THE WRITS OF ASSISTANCE. despise a fee,) I will to my dying day oppose with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villany on the other, as this writ of assistance is. MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HONORS: I was de- | under a fee or not, (for in such a cause as this I sired by one of the Court to look into the books, and consider the question now before them concerning Writs of Assistance. I have accordingly considered it, and now appear not only in obedience to your order, but likewise in behalf of the inhabitants of this town, who have presented another petition, and out of regard to the liberties of the subject. And I take this opportunity to declare, that whether It appears to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law book. I must therefore beg your honors' patience and | I say I admit that special writs of assistance, to attention to the whole range of an argument, that may perhaps appear uncommon in many things, as well as to points of learning that are more remote and unusual: that the whole tendency of my design may the more easily be perceived, the conclusions better descend, and the force of them be better felt. I shall not think much of my pains in this cause, as I engaged in it from principle. I was solicited to argue this cause as Advocate General; and because I would not, I have been charged with desertion from my office. To this charge I can give a very sufficient answer. I renounced that office, and I argue this cause from the same principle; and I argue it with the greater pleasure, as it is in favor of British liberty, at a time when we hear the greatest monarch upon earth declaring from his throne that he glories in the name of Briton, and that the privileges of his people are dearer to him than the most valuable prerogatives of his crown; and as it is in opposition to a kind of power, the exercise of which in former periods of history, cost one King of England his head, and another his throne. I have taken more pains in this cause than I ever will take again, although my engaging in this and another popular cause has raised much resentment. But I think I can sincerely declare, that I cheerfully submit myself to every odious name for conscience' sake; and from my soul I despise all those, whose guilt, malice, or folly has made them my foes. Let the consequences be what they will, I am determined to proceed. The only principles of public conduct, that are worthy of a gentleman or a man, are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of his country. search special places, may be granted to certain persons on oath; but I deny that the writ now prayed for can be granted, for I beg leave to make some observations on the writ itself, before I proceed to other acts of Parliament. In the first place, the writ is universal, being directed "to all and singular justices, sheriffs, constables, and all other officers and subjects;" so that, in short, it is directed to every subject in the king's dominions. Every one with this writ may be a tyrant; if this commission be legal, a tyrant in a legal manner, also, may control, imprison, or murder any one within the realm. In the next place, it is perpetual, there is no return. A man is accountable to no person for his doings. Every man may reign secure in his petty tyranny, and spread terror and desolation around him, until the trump of the archangel shall excite different emotions in his soul. In the third place, a person with this writ, in the daytime, may enter all houses, shops, &c., at will, and command all to assist him. Fourthly, by this writ, not only deputies, &c., but even their menial servants, are allowed to lord it over us. What is this but to have the curse of Canaan with a witness on us; to be the servant of servants, the most despicable of God's creation? Now one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege. Custom-house officers may enter our houses when they please; we are commanded to permit their entry. Their menial servants may enter, may break locks, These manly sentiments, in private life, bars, and every thing in their way: and whemake the good citizen; in public life, the ther they break through malice or revenge, no patriot and the hero. I do not say, that when man, no court can inquire. Bare suspicion brought to the test, I shall be invincible. I without oath is sufficient. This wanton exerpray God I may never be brought to the mel-cise of this power is not a chimerical suggestion ancholy trial, but if ever I should, it will be then known how far I can reduce to practice principles which I know to be founded in truth. In the mean time I will proceed to the subject of this writ. Your honors will find in the old books concerning the office of a justice of the peace, precedents of general warrants to search suspected houses. But in more modern books, you will find only special warrants to search such and such houses, specially named, in which the complainant has before sworn that he suspects his goods are concealed; and will find it adjudged, that special warrants only are legal. In the same manner I rely on it, that the writ prayed for in this petition, being general, is illegal. It is a power that places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer. *Otis had lately been occupying the office of Advocate General of the Crown, and had resigned because "he beHeved these writs to be illegal and tyrannical," and would not prostitute his office to the support of an oppressive act. of a heated brain. I will mention some facts. Mr. Pew had one of these writs, and when Mr. Ware succeeded him, he endorsed this writ over to Mr. Ware: so that, these writs are negotiable from one officer to another; and so your honors have no opportunity of judging the persons to whom this vast power is delegated. Another instance is this: Mr. Justice Walley had called this same Mr. Ware before him, by a constable, to answer for a breach of the sabbath-day acts, or that of profane swearing. As soon as he had finished, Mr. Ware asked him if he had done. He replied, Yes. Well then, said Mr. Ware, I will show you a little of my power. I command you to permit me to search your house for uncustomed goods; and went on to search the house from the garret to the cellar; and then served the constable in the same manner! But to show another absurdity in this writ, if it should be established, I insist upon it every person, by the 14th Charles Second, has this power as well as the customhouse officers. The words are, "it shall be lawful for any person or persons authorized, | them together in little groups, and by degrees &c." What a scene does this open! Every in larger congregations, for mutual assistance man prompted by revenge, ill-humor, or wantonness to inspect the inside of his neighbor's house, may get a writ of assistance. Others will ask it from self-defence; one arbitrary exertion will provoke another, until society be involved in tumult and in blood. The summary of this speech can be best, and can now be only given in the words of John Adams, who divides it into five parts: 1. "He began with an exordium, containing an apology for his resignation of the office of Advocate General in the Court of Admiralty; and for his appearance in that cause in opposition to the Crown, and in favor of the town of Boston, and the merchants of Boston and Salem. 2. "A dissertation on the rights of man in a state of nature. He asserted that every man, merely natural, was an independent sovereign, subject to no law but the law written on his heart, and revealed to him by his Maker, in the constitution of his nature, and the inspiration of his understanding and his conscience. His right to his life, his liberty, no created being could rightfully contest. Nor was his right to his property less incontestable. The club that he had snapped from a tree, for a staff or for defence, was his own. His bow and arrow were his own; if by a pebble he had killed a partridge or a squirrel, it was his own. No creature, man or beast, had a right to take it from him. If he had taken an eel, or a smelt, or a sculpion, it was his property. In short, he sported upon this topic with so much wit and humor, and at the same time with so much indisputable truth and reason, that he was not less entertaining than instructive. He asserted that these rights were inherent and inalienable. That they never could be surrendered or alienated, but by idiots or madmen, and all the acts of idiots and lunatics were void, and not obligatory, by all the laws of God and man. Nor were the poor negroes forgotten. Not a Quaker in Philadelphia, or Mr. Jefferson in Virginia, ever asserted the rights of negroes in stronger terms. Young as I was, and ignorant as I was, I shuddered at the doctrine he taught; and I have all my life shuddered, and still shudder, at the consequences that may be drawn from such premises. Shall we say, that the rights of masters and servants clash, and can be decided only by force? I adore the idea of gradual abolitions! but who shall decide how fast or how slowly these abolitions shall be made? 3. "From individual independence he proceeded to association. If it was inconsistent with the dignity of human nature to say that men were gregarious animals, like wild geese, it surely could offend no delicacy to say they were social animals by nature; that there were natural sympathies, and above all, the sweet attraction of the sexes, which must soon draw and defence. And this must have happened before any formal covenant, by express words or signs, was concluded. When general councils and deliberations commenced, the objects could be no other than the mutual defence and security of every individual for his life, his liberty, and his property. To suppose them to have surrendered these in any other way than by equal rules and general consent, was to suppose them idiots or madmen, whose acts were never binding. To suppose them surprised by fraud, or compelled by force into any other compact, such fraud and such force could confer no obligation. Every man had a right to trample it under foot whenever he pleased. In short, he asserted these rights to be derived only from nature, and the author of nature; that they were inherent, inalienable, and indefeasible by any laws, pacts, contracts, covenants, or stipulations, which man could devise. 4. "These principles and these rights were wrought into the English constitution, as fundamental laws. And under this head he went back to the old Saxon laws, and to Magna Charta, and the fifty confirmations of it in Parliament, and the executions ordained against the violators of it, and the national vengeance which had been taken on them from time to time, down to the Jameses and Charleses; and to the position of rights and the bill of rights, and the revolution. He asserted, that the security of these rights to life, liberty and property, had been the object of all those struggles against arbitrary power, temporal and spiritual, civil and political, military and ecclesiastical, in every age. He asserted, that our ancestors, as British subjects, and we, their descendants, as British subjects, were entitled to all those rights, by the British constitution, as well as by the law of nature, and our provincial character, as much as any inhabitant of London or Bristol, or any part of England; and were not to be cheated out of them by any phantom of 'virtual representation,' or any other fiction of law or politics, or any monkish trick of deceit and hypocrisy. 5. "He then examined the acts of trade, one by one, and demonstrated, that if they were considered as revenue laws, they destroyed all our security of property, liberty, and life, every right of nature, and the English constitution, and the charter of the province. Here he considered the distinction between 'external and internal taxes,' at that time a popular and commonplace distinction. But he asserted that there was no such distinction in theory, or upon any principle but 'necessity.' The necessity that the commerce of the empire should be under one direction, was obvious. The Americans had been so sensible of this necessity, that they had connived at the distinction between external and internal taxes, and had submitted to the acts of trade as regulations of commerce, but never as taxations, or revenue laws. Nor had the British govern- | Charles II., a plagiarism from Oliver Cromment, till now, ever dared to attempt to en- well. This act had lain dormant for fifteen force them as taxations or revenue laws. They years. In 1675, after repeated letters and orhad lain dormant in that character for a cen- ders from the king, Governor Leverett very tury almost. The navigation act he allowed to candidly informs his majesty that the law had be binding upon us, because we had consented not been executed, because it was thought unto it by our own legislature. Here he gave a constitutional; Parliament not having authority history of the navigation act of the first of over us." THE STUDY OF THE LAW. I shall always lament that I did not take a year or two further for more general inquiries in the arts and sciences before I sat down to the laborious study of the laws of my country. Early and short clerkships and a premature rushing into practice, without a competent knowledge in the theory of law, have blasted the hopes of (and ruined the expectations formed by the parents of) most of the students in the profession, who have fallen within my observation for these ten or fifteen years past. I hold it to be of vast importance that a young man should be able to make some eclat at his opening, which it is in vain to expect from one under twenty-five: missing of this is very apt to discourage and dispirit him, and what is of worse consequence, may prevent the application of clients ever after. It has been observed before I was born, if a man don't obtain a character in any profession soon after his first appearance, he hardly will ever obtain one. The bulk of mankind, I need not inform you, who have conversed with, studied and found many of them out, are a gaping crew, and like little children and all other gazing creatures, won't look long upon one object which gives them pleasure; much less will they seek for entertainment where they have been twice or thrice disappointed. The late eminent Mr. John Reed, who, by some, has been perhaps justly esteemed the greatest common lawyer this continent ever saw, was, you know, many years a clergyman, and had attained the age of forty before he began the practice, if not before he began the study, of the law. Sir Peter King, formerly Lord High Chancellor of England, kept a grocer's shop till he was turned of thirty, then fell into an acquaintance with the immortal John Locke, who discovered a genius in him, advised him to books and assisted in his education; after which he took to the study of the common law, and finally attained to the highest place to which his royal master could advance a lawyer. I think I have been told the Lord Chief Justice Pemberton, or some one of the Chief Justices of England, was a bankrupt, and in the Fleet, prison for debt, before he even dreamed of being a lawyer. I mention these instances, not as arguments to prove it would be most eligible to stay till thirty or forty, before a man begins the study of a profession he is to live by; but this inference I think very fairly follows, that those gentlemen availed themselves much of the ripeness of their judgments when they began this study, and made much swifter progress than a young man of twenty with all the genius in the world could do; or they would have been approaching superannuation before they would be equipped with a sufficient degree of learning once to give hope for the success they found, and then such hope would vanish, unless they could get a new lease of life and understanding.* * This extract is taken from a letter addressed by James Otis to his father, in reference to the legal education of his younger brother, Samuel Allyne Otis, who, in later life, became Secretary of the Senate of the United States. PATRICK HENRY. THIS distinguished "orator of nature," was born at Studley, in the county of Hanover, and Colony of Virginia. His father emigrated to America, from Aberdeen, Scotland, in quest of fortune, sometime prior to 1730; and his mother, who belonged to the family of Winstons, was a native of the county in which he was born. On the maternal side, he seems to have belonged to an oratorical race. His uncle, William Winston, is said to have been highly gifted with that peculiar cast of eloquence for which Mr. Henry became afterwards so justly celebrated. An anecdote of this gentleman's rhetorical powers is recorded by the eloquent biographer of Mr. Henry. During the French and Indian war, soon after the defeat of the unfortunate Braddock, when the militia were marched to the frontiers of Virginia against the enemy, William Winston was the lieutenant of a company. The men, who were indifferently clothed, without tents, and exposed to the rigor and inclemency of the weather, discovered great aversion to the service, and were anxious and even clamorous to return to their families; when Winston, mounting a stump, addressed them with such keenness of invective, and declaimed with such force of eloquence, on liberty and patriotism, that when he concluded, the general cry was, "Let us march on; lead us against the enemy!" and they were now willing and anxious to encounter all those difficulties and dangers which, but a few moments before, had almost produced a mutiny. The youth of Mr. Henry gave no presage of his future greatness. He was idle and indolent; . playing truant from his school, and spending the greater portion of his time in the sports of the field; often sitting whole days upon the margin of some stream, waiting for a bite, or even "one glorious nibble." The lamentable effects of this idleness clung to him through life. After passing one year as merchant's clerk, young Henry, at the age of sixteen, was established in trade by his father, but "through laziness, the love of music, the charms of the chase, and a readiness to trust every one," he soon became bankrupt. One advantage, however, he derived from this experiment; it was in the study of humar: nature. All his customers underwent his scrutiny, not with reference to their integrity or solvency, but in relation to the structure of their minds and opinions. In this school, it is the opinion of his biographer, Mr. Henry was prepared for his future life. "For those continual efforts to render himself intelligible to his plain and unlettered hearers, on subjects entirely new to them, taught him that clear and simple style which forms the best vehicle of thought to a popular assembly; while his attempts to interest and affect them, in order that he might hear from them the echo of nature's voice, instructed him in those topics of persuasion by which men are most certainly to be moved, and in the kind of imagery and structure of language which were the best fitted to strike and agitate their hearts." At the early age of eighteen, Mr. Henry was married to Miss Shelton, the daughter of a poor but honest farmer in the neighborhood of his birthplace. The young couple settled on a small farm, and "with the assistance of one or two slaves, Mr. Henry had to delve the earth for his subsistence." His want of agricultural skill and natural aversion to all kinds of systematic labor, closed his career as a farmer in two years, when he again commenced and again failed in |