The Pre-Revolutionary Writings of James Otis, Jr.

John Clark Ridpath wrote in 1898,

The pre-revolutionists are the Titans of human history; the revolutionists proper are only heroes; and the post revolutionists are too frequently dwarfs and weaklings. This signifies that civilization advances by revolutionary stages, and that history sends out her tallest and best sons to explore the line of march and to select the spot for the next campground. It is not they, who actually command the oncoming columns and who seem so huge against the historical background—it is not these, but rather the hoarse forerunner and shaggy prophet or progress who are the real kings of men—the true princes of the human empire.[1]

Here then we will give witness to the “courageous herald who ran swinging the torch in the early dawn of the American Revolution.”[2]

The Otis family had lived in Massachusetts for five generations by the time that James Otis Jr. was born. Many of his ancestors had been prominent leaders in the colony: judges, lawyers, and militia officers. He was born in Massachusetts on February 5, 1725.

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James graduated from Harvard in 1743, and studied on his own for two years, reading law, politics, and literature to deepen his education,[3] He moved to Boston and set up his law practice there. He became one of the four most successful lawyers in Boston. In 1756 he was appointed by the Royal Governor as Advocate-General of the Boston Vice Admiralty Court.[4]

Writs of Assistance

King George II had recently died and his son came to the throne as George III. Search warrants were issued in the name of the King, and as there was a new King new search warrants had to be re-issued. One of those search warrants was known as a “Writ of Assistance.” It was used by customs officers to search for smuggled goods that might have entered any port. Writs of assistance had been used in England for centuries and in Massachusetts since the 1690s. They were not quite the open-ended invitation for mischief that some have made them out to be. The search could only be made during broad daylight, no midnight raids, and a customs officer could not conduct the search by himself, he had to apply to the courts for assistance, usually in the form of a sheriff; hence, “Writs of Assistance”. As the courts were about to issue new writs, a group of merchants wanted to stop them. They did not want customs officers searching their warehouses and homes. They hired two attorneys to take their case to court: Oxenbridge Thatcher and James Otis, Jr.

As he was going to be suing the government on behalf of his clients, Otis resigned his position on the Vice-Admiralty Court.[5] Gerimiah Gridley, who had taught both Thatcher and Otis the law in Massachusetts, was there to represent the administration.

Gridley, the most prominent attorney in Boston at the time, spoke first and opened the case for the administration. He referred to statutes going back to the reigns of Charles II, Queen Anne, and William III.[6] He pointed out that the writs were authorized by the British parliament and “that the parliament was the sovereign legislature of the British empire.”[7] He also pointed out that the writs had been long in use both in England and Massachusetts.

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Oxenbridge Thatcher then opened up the case for the merchants. He pointed out that the writs actually violated the laws of England, no matter that Parliament had authorized them; they were contrary to the British constitution, and therefor had no basis in law.

Then it was Otis’s turn to speak. He began by saying, “It appears to me that [the writs are] the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principle of law that was found in an English law book.”[8] He said that “a man’s house is his castle, and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle.”[9] The colonists are, by the laws of nature, free born as indeed all are, white and black . . . Does it follow that it is right to enslave a man because he is black?”[10]

Otis not only challenged the writs, he argued that natural law trumped statutory law. He denied that any legislature, even parliament, had the authority to issue the writs. “The writ is against the fundamental principles of laws.”[11]

According to John Adams, “Otis was a flame of fire . . . then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there was the child of independence borne.”[12] He further added that “Otis was the first influential voice to bring up the notion of ‘natural rights.’”[13]

After the oral arguments were over, Thomas Hutchinson, as the chief judge, continued the case without a decision, saying, “The court has considered the subject of the writs of assistance and can see no foundation for such a writ; but as the practice in England is not known, it has been thought best to continue the question to the next term, that in the meantime opportunity may be given to know the result.”[14]

John Adams admitted later that “no judgment was announced, nothing was said about the writs of assistance, but it was generally reported and understood that the court clandestinely granted them and the customs officers had them in their pockets, though I never knew that they dared produce and executed them in any instance.”[15] Because the court had not rendered a verdict, the law still stood, but what Adams did not know was that Hutchinson was on record as finding that the writs were illegal under British law.

After the writs trial Otis became the leader of the opposition to the government. His popularity was instantaneous and universal, and a few months later in May 1761 he was elected to the House of Representatives.

A Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives

In 1762, the French and Indian War was still going on. The people of Salem and Marblehead heard that a French Privateer had been seen in the waters off the coast of New England and were concerned that their fishing vessels might be at risk. They went to the governor requesting his aid. The House of Representatives was not scheduled to meet in the near future, so the governor took it upon himself, with the advice of his council, to arm a sloop, add twenty-four men to her crew, and sent it to look for the French privateer.

When the House came back into session, he reported that he had “fitted a [vessel] in the most frugal manor I had within my command and augmented her crew . . . and sent her out.” He added that he had withdrawn something like £400 from the colonial treasury for the expense. He then made a request of the House to reimburse that amount to the treasury.

The House officially received the governor’s message, debated it, and rejected it. Otis wrote the message to the governor, and it was approved by the house and sent to the governor.

The House has duly attended your Excellency’s message of the 11th instant . . . justice to ourselves, and to our constituents oblige us to remonstrate against the method of making or increasing establishments by the governor and council. It is in effect taking from the House it’s most darling privilege, the right to originate all taxes. In short, the annihilation of one branch of the legislature . . . Excellency, as you regard the peace and welfare of the province, that no measure of this matter [should] be taken for the future, let the advice of council be what it may.[16]

When the governor received this rather haughty message from the House, he could not let it pass. At 5pm that same day, he sent another message to the House: “I have, this morning, received a message from the House, which I have enclosed, in so much [as] the kings name, dignity, and cause are so improperly treated.” He requested the House expunge the document, which the house refused to do.

The governor again wrote to the House, going over in detail the request of the people of Salem and Marblehead, and restating the facts. He concluded by saying that the message sent to him by the House contained “hard words: and conscience of my own integrity will not permit me to submit in silence to such imputations . . . If you therefore think it proper to send such a charge as this to the press; I must desire that my vindication may accompany it.” The House did send both their original message to the governor and his vindication to the press. It caused quite a stir in the general public. The actions of the House were deemed by many as out of line.

The public outcry was enough to cause Otis to write a defense of the actions of the House. He opened it saying that, “The following vindication, was written in order to give a clear view of the House of Representatives, from some very injurious aspirations that have been cast upon them, by people out of doors.”

In this publication Otis gave a lengthy series of arguments which basically said that it was not so much why the governor did what he did, but that the House felt that if they granted to governor’s request, they were going to set a precedent in which future governors might authorize expenditures that had never been authorized by the House. The House had one responsibility and right, and that was that all monies and taxes must originate from the House. Otis then went through several scenarios in which the right of the House could be abused should they waive that right on this occasion. It would set a precedent. In almost an afterthought, in a short paragraph in the middle of his pamphlet, he posited how the governor should have handled the situation, thereby protecting the rights of the House: “The governor and council doubtless meant well as to the protection of the fishery.” Otis just objected to the method used by the governor in spending the money needed. Had the governor simply “recommended a reimbursement to the assembly,” or “perhaps have ‘borrowed’ [the money] from the treasurer upon some terms . . . the privilege of the House would have been preserved. It would have been an easy thing.”

The Stamp Act

In 1764 the British Parliament announced it was going to require stamps, printed in England and shipped to America, to be sold to the public and required on all legal documents, all newspapers and a number of other items, almost all public papers. The crown appointed one person in each colony to sell the stamps, who would be entitled to keep a percentage of the selling price that had been set by Parliament. Never before had the British tried to directly tax the Americans. The reason for doing this at that time was that Britain, having won the French and Indian war, needed to bear the expense of maintaining troops in the colonies to keep peace between colonists and indigenous people. With a huge war debt, and British people in the home islands were already heavily taxed, it was thought logical for Americans to start paying some share of the empire’s expenses. Before the Stamp Act was passed, government officials called in the various agents in London that had been designated by colonies to represent them. The agents had no seat in Parliament but were expected to maintain close ties with government officials and keep them advised on issues seen by the colonists. The agents, including Benjamin Franklin representing Pennsylvania, approved of the stamp tax, thinking it would cause no problems at home.

They were wrong.

A number of colonies wrote a remonstrance to the King and Parliament; in Massachusetts it was a collaborative effort between the House and the Council. It took several revisions, but eventually a text was agreed to by all parties.[17] When it was sent to London both Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson and Gov. Francis Bernard added that they “agreed with the sentiments therein.”[18]

The British parliament and the King ignored the colonial remonstrances, the stamp act was passed by a large margin, and the stamps were sent to America. At this point civil society almost totally broke down in Boston. Mobs became uncontrollable, like “devils let lose.”[19] The stamp act agents were tarred and feathered or harried into resigning. Stamps were seized and burned.[20]

When the stamps arrived in Boston, the governor asked the legislature what should be done with them; the stamp distributor had resigned and there was no one to receive the stamps. The governor reached out to the House to find a solution that would be acceptable to everyone. It didn’t work. The House replied, with Otis writing the message:

The House, having given due attention to our excellency’s message this day, begs leave to acquaint your excellency, that the stamped papers mentioned in your message, are brought here without any direction to this government. It is the sense of the House, that it may prove an ill consequence for them to, in any ways, to interest themselves in this matter. We hope therefor, your excellency will excuse us if we cannot see our way clear to give you any advice or assistance therein.[21]

As the summer wore on the rioting got worse. Finally, one night the mob, after gathering at the town square and after speeches and drinking, somehow got word that Hutchinson had sponsored the stamp tax, even though he had not.[22] It was rumored that Otis had sworn that “he knew for a fact that the whole idea of the stamp tax had been hatched by Thomas Hutchinson and Governor Bernard.”[23]

The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved

It was in the midst of all this that Otis took pen to paper and wrote a lengthy pamphlet on the situation.[24] In it he articulated strong support and legal reasoning proving the illegality of Parliament’s attempt to tax Americans; at the same time he spoke quite forcefully of the role of Parliament as the supreme legislature in the British Empire, and therefor it was legal for Parliament to make laws binding on the American people. The premise of the paper can be stated in four points.

1. That parliament was “supreme and unaccountable.” That they might legislate for the colonies and the colonies must obey.
2. That the colonists were British citizens and as such were guaranteed, by nature, by the common law, by the British constitution, and by Parliament certain undeniable and irrevocable rights.
3. That taxation without representation in parliament was illegal and made slaves of the colonists.
4. That the people had a right to remonstrate and petition Parliament for removal of the unlawful tax.

Otis agreed that while Parliament had the power to legislate for the entire empire, “it is not a question of power, but of right.” The power of Parliament had boundaries:

1. They must govern by stated laws.
2. Those laws should have no other end . . . but the good of the people.
3. Taxes were not to be laid on people, but by their consent in person, or by deputation.
4. Their whole power was not transferable.”

He argued that where the people were not represented in Parliament, they would be justified in refusing to pay taxes, but they must and ought to yield obedience to any act of Parliament until repealed by Parliament.

Otis concluded his argument with these words;

The sum of my argument is that civil government is of God: That the administration of it was originally the whole people: That they might have devolved it on whom they pleased: That this devolution is fiduciary, for the good of the whole . . . That the constitution is the most free and by far best now existing on earth: That by this constitution every man in the dominions is a free man: That no parts of his Majesty’s domains can be taxed without their consent: That every part has a right to be represented in the supreme or some subordinate legislation: That the refusal of this would seem to be a contradiction in practice to the theory of the constitution: That the colonies are subordinate dominions . . . [and should] be represented in some proportion to their number and estates, in the grand legislature of the nation: That this would firmly unite all parts of the British Empire, in the greatest peace and prosperity, and render it invulnerable and perpetual.

But Otis did not stop there. He re-iterated what he said in the writs trial. He stated that all persons in the colonies were free men, British subjects and all were “black and white, born here and are free born British subjects, and are entitled to all the essential rights as such.”

And again, as in his speech at the writs trial, he spoke of “the law of nature”:

In a state of nature, no man can take my property from me without my consent: if he does, he deprives me of my liberty, and makes me a slave . . . The very act of taxing exercised over those who are not represented, appears to me to be depriving them of one of their most essential rights.

Considerations on Behalf of the British Colonists in a Letter to a Noble Lord

In 1765 the Stamp Act had been passed and the resistance movement began in earnest. Americans by and large were not going to use the stamps. The courts stopped functioning and other activities were curtailed as they could not legally function without the stamps. Otis again wrote and published a pamphlet resisting the idea of not just the stamps themselves, but the very idea of parliament taxing Americans when no American had a representative in parliament.[25] When Otis wrote the Rights of the Colonists he had taken some flak from his more radical allies, like Samuel Adams, over his insistence that the British parliament was the supreme legislature and could make laws for the colonists. This was one part of a two-part theme that Otis kept hammering on. Part one was that Parliament was the supreme legislature for the empire, including the colonies. The second part of that same point, much like the front and back of a coin, was that as per the British constitution, the colonies had a right to be represented in Parliament and that when Parliament taxed or made laws without colonial representation, they were stepping outside the bounds of the British constitution. Therefore the colonists, while obeying, had a duty and a right to remonstrate against the Stamp Act and petition Parliament and the King’s ministers that any law relating to the colonies was outside the law, and should be reversed. This was a theme that Otis would never let go of.

Otis opened his argument by saying that a “gentleman thinks it is ‘absurd and insolent’ to question the expediency and utility of a public measure.” This “gentleman” was un-named by Otis, but, he said, a noble Lord in Britain noted it and requested Otis to respond to it. The gentleman seemed, said Otis, “to be an utter enemy to the freedom of enquiry after truth, justice and equity.” In the gentleman’s article the idea that “no Englishman is or can be taxed but by his own consent in person or by his deputy is absurdly denied.” The gentleman seemed to suggest that actual consent by all citizens was impossible; some were too poor and didn’t have the property requirements, some were too feeble minded, or suffered from any possible situation that prevented them from being able to vote or personally give consent.

Otis contended that what the man said was true but, “right reason and the spirit of a free constitution requires the representation of the whole people should be as equal as possible.” Otis added that the kind of difficulty the gentleman referred to often resulted “in most cases the poor people” having no vote. He went on to say, “no good reason . . . can be given in any country why everyman of sound mind should not have a vote in the election of a representative.” Next, Otis broke new ground again, saying, “if a man has too little property to protect and defend, yet is not life and liberty things of some importance?” This idea, that poor people have a stake in the community and should have the right to vote, was, like the idea that both black and white are due freedom and liberty according to natural law, new ground that Otis was plowing. In Britain and in the British colonies, and in the early history of the United States, one had to own a certain amount of property to be able to vote. It was felt that without property, one had no real stake in a community. Otis insisted that a man’s life and liberty were things of value and thus every man deserved a vote in choosing a representative in the legislature.

Otis noted that many Britons said that the majority of Britons did not have the right to vote, that only about twenty percent of men in the country were allowed to vote, yet the parliament claimed to represent the whole nation. Thus, the demands by the colonies for representation in Parliament was not backed by history, to which Otis replied, “The more the pity.”

Otis then addressed the British idea that the Americans were “virtually represented” in Parliament, as Parliament governed for the whole empire. Otis, in referring to the British constitution going back to king James I, noted that it referred to persons giving their consent either “in person or by representation”; that he found not a word of “virtual representation.” “In truth,” he said, “the colonists are no more represented in the Housse of Commons, than they are in the house of Lords.” In a footnote he added, “It is nowhere said in any law book, that the House of Commons, in fact or law, virtually represents the colonists.”

A Vindication of the British Colonists, Against the Aspersions of the Halifax Gentleman, in his Letter to a Rhode-Island Friend

In 1765 Otis wrote his last major work.[26] In this one he took on an American who wrote in opposition to those Americans protesting against Parliament and demanding the rights guaranteed to all Britons, as claimed by Otis and others.

This pamphlet was written in 1765; the publisher of a 1769 London printing, in a preface, stated that they were publishing this tract “not for any excellence in the work, but for the eminence of the author. We see here the first leader in the American dispute, declaring the unusual opinion of the colonists against the authority of the British parliament.” It is obvious from this that Otis was as well known in Great Britain as in America.

Otis began his pamphlet by noting that “soon after the news arrived in America of the passing of the stamp act,” Mr. Hopkins, “Governor of Rhode Island wrote a small tract on that subject. He was answered by a Mr. Howard in a tract called, A Letter to a Gentleman in Halifax.” Otis then wrote a reply to that letter:

I cannot think Mr. Hopkins, or any other of the writers who have the misfortune to fall under the displeasure of the Halifax gentleman, ever really intended to encourage so groundless a claim as an independent, uncontrollable, provincial legislature.

Otis then added the “but”:

[This] by no means from thence follows, that it is always expedient, and in all circumstances equitable for the supreme and foreign legislature to tax the colonies, much less than it is reasonable this right should be practiced without allowing the colonies an actual representation. Equal representation of the whole state is . . . of the essence of a perfect parliament, or supreme legislative.

Otis spoke of the different ways from whence this right of representation comes:

The absolute liberties of Englishmen are principally three. 1. The right of personal security. 2. The right of personal liberty. 3. The right of private property.
Besides these three primary rights, there are others which are subordinate . . . 1. The constitution or power of parliament. 2. The limitation of the king’s prerogative, (and to vindicate when actually violated.) 3. The regular administration of justice. 4. The right of petitioning for redress of grievances. 5. The right of having and using arms for self-defense.
The colonists do not hold these rights as a privilege granted them nor, enjoy them as a grace and favor bestowed, but possess them as an inherent, indefeasible right, as Mr. Hopkins very justly asserts.

Otis discussed the idea floated by members of the British parliament, and others, that as Parliament represented the whole empire, it “virtually” represented all those who had no vote. Otis confronted this issue head on:

I cannot find it affirmed or declared in one act of parliamentary proceedings, nor in one English lawbook, that a British House of Commons are in fact the representative of the plebian subjects . . . Lord Coke indeed says, that ‘the House of Commons represents all the commons of England . . . but nowhere asserts that the House of Commons in fact represents . . . dominions out of the realm.

Otis then restated what he said in the Rights of the British Colonies Asserted:

I lay it down as of the first principle from whence I intend to deduce the civil rights of the British colonies, that all of them are subject to, and that therefore, as over subordinate governments, the parliament of Great Britain has an undoubted power and lawful authority to make acts for the general good.

But Otis did not stop there, and the following must always be understood as co-equal with the acknowledgement of the supremacy of Parliament:

When the parliament shall think it fit to allow the colonists a representation in the House of Commons, the equity of their taxing the colonies will be as clear as their power is at present of doing it without, if they please.

Conclusion

James Otis, Jr.’s place in the pantheon of American history has dimmed over the years. He was once known and admired all over America and Europe. In 1767 John Dickinson, an attorney in Philadelphia, wrote a series of letters that became known as Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer. The letters were written as if the writer was a rural farmer and in them Dickinson defended the American right to oppose the tax laws issued by the British parliament. Before he had them published, he sent them to Otis for review with a cover letter:

In gratitude to your province, in general, I do not want to forget the obligation which all Americans are under to you in particular, for the indefatigable zeal and undaunted courage, you have shown in defending their rights. My opinion of your love for our country, induces me to commit to your hands the enclosed letters to be disposed as you think proper.[27]

Otis told Dickinson that they should be published and at Otis’s suggestion the town of Boston passed a vote of thanks to Dickinson.

Unfortunately, Otis had a major psychological behavioral problem that got worse as time went on. From 1760 on until 1771 he grew steadily worse. He would be rational and brilliant for long periods of time, but then would have periods of hyper mental activity that went beyond normal and interfered with both his work and his relationships. In 1767 he got into a fight with a political opponent and was hit over the head with a cane. It caused a severe wound and made his condition so bad that he resigned in 1771 from the legislature, and his family had to take him out of Boston and to a family farm where he spent the rest of his days.[28]

John Adams, as he began his law practice, noted that Otis, at times, acted “strangely. He was liable to great iniquities of temper, sometimes in a despondency and sometimes in a rage.”[29] As Otis got worse, people began to look elsewhere for legal help. At one point the court docket showed that Josiah Quincy had nine cases, John Adams sixty, and James Otis four.[30] In 1771, John Adams was the busiest lawyer in Boston. In one of Otis’s more lucid periods, Adams gave him eighteen of his clients to work their cases.[31]

Otis could turn a phrase now and then, still. In 1769 while attending a session of the legislature he listened to a long speech by a proponent of the administration. When the member finished Otis jumped up and said, “Mr. Speaker, the liberty of this country has fled and is gone forever, I’ll go after it.” With that Otis got up and left the chamber.[32]

Otis had one more action to give to the people of his country. He had always preached that what he was after was a recognition by the British that Americans were entitled to the same rights under the English constitution as were those who lived in Britain itself. He was a British American, claiming English rights for his fellow Americans. He was never after independence. But “he sowed the seed without knowing what kind of harvest it was to produce, for his writings and speeches did more than those of any other man towards preparing the minds of others the final separation from England.”[33]

When the battle for independence finally came, he still stood with his fellow Americans. The day before the battle of Bunker Hill in 1775, Otis saw a group of militia men marching towards Boston past his sister’s house where he was living at the time. He went to a neighbor’s house, borrowed a musket, and caught up with the militia. He was seen during the battle using his musket, and after the battle was over he walked back home, returned the musket to the neighbor, and then sometime after midnight returned to his sister’s house “weary and feint.”[34]

In 1783, as he was standing in the doorway of the house, during a thunderstorm, he was struck by lightning and killed. His body was taken to Boston, “and his funeral was attended with every mark of respect, and exhibited one of the most numerous processions ever seen in the town.”[35]

James Otis was the man who had the greatest hand in what became the Fourth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, prohibiting unreasonable search and seizures by government authorities. This was already based in the English constitution and Otis applied it to America. “The 4th Amendment is one of the most important playing fields on which the battle between liberty and tyranny is waged . . . no authority preceding Otis had articulated so completely the framework for the search and seizure requirements that were ultimately embedded in the Fourth Amendment.”[36]

The Fourth Amendment, echoing Otis’s arguments against the Writs of Assistance, reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

[1] James Clark Ridpath, James Otis: The Pre-Revolutionist (The University Association, 1898; Reprinted: Chicago, Union School Furnishing Company), 8-9.

[2] Ibid., 8.

[3] William Tudor, The Life of James Otis of Massachusetts (Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1823), 4-8.

[4] American History Central, “James Otis—Father of the American Revolution,” www.americanhistorycentral.com/enter/james-otis-jr/.

[5] Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1974), 55.

[6] Ridpath, James Otis, The Pre-Revolutionist, 45-46.

[7] Tudor, The Life of James Otis of Massachusetts, 60.

[8] Ibid., 63.

[9] Ridpath, James Otis, The Pre-Revolutionist, 53.

[10] David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 132-133.

[11] Page Smith, John Adams, Vol. 1 (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1962), 55.

[12] James Grant, John Adams, A Party of One (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2005), 58.

[13] Douglas R. Egerton, Death and Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009),45.

[14] Tudor, The Life of James Otis of Massachusetts, 86.

[15] Ibid., 86n.

[16] James Otis, A Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay: More Particularly, in the Last Session of the General Assembly (Boston: Edes and Gill, 1762). All quotes in this section are taken from this pamphlet.

[17] Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay From 1749 to 1774 (London: John Murray, 1828), 112-114.

[18] Tudor, The Life of James Otis of Massachusetts, 188.

[19] McCullough, John Adams, 58.

[20] Smith, John Adams, 75.

[21] Tudor, The Life of James Otis of Massachusetts, 206-207.

[22] Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, 59.

[23] Ibid., 66.

[24] James Otis, Jr., The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (Boston: Edes and Gill, 1764). All quotes in this section are taken from this pamphlet.

[25] James Otis, Jr., Considerations on Behalf of the Colonists in a Letter to a Noble Lord (London: J. Almon, 1765). All quotes in this section are taken from this pamphlet.

[26] James Otis, Jr., A Vindication of the British Colonists (London: J. Almon, 1769). All quotes in this section are taken from this pamphlet.

[27] Tudor, The Life of James Otis of Massachusetts, 257.

[28] Grant, John Adams, A Party of One, 83-84.

[29] McCoullough, John Adams, 61.

[30] Catherine Drinker Bowen, John Adams and the American Revolution (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1950), 338.

[31] Ibid., 414.

[32] Grant, John Adams, A Party of One, 83.

[33] Ridpath, James Otis, The Pre-Revolutionist, 127.

[34] Bowen, John Adams and the American Revolution, 536. Ridpath, James Otis, The Pre-Revolutionist, 160-161.

[35] Tudor, The Life of James Otis of Massachusetts, 486.

[36] Gary M. Giles, “Who was the Founding Father of the Fourth Amendment?,” Foundation for Economics Education, www.fee.org/articles/who-was-the-founding-father-of-the-fourth-amendment/.