James Otis, the Pre-Revolutionist

by John Clark Ridpath; G. Mercer Adam; Charles K. Edmunds

It applied to a state of affairs that already existed.

The American ship, trading with the West Indies and bringing back to Boston a cargo of molasses or rum, was met at custom house with an exorbitant requisition. The officer acting under the Importation Act, virtually said, "Stand and deliver."

If it were a British ship the resistance to the duty would be offered by the land merchants rather than by the sea traders; for the merchants did not desire that the cost of the merchandise to themselves and their customers should be doubled without some equivalent advantage. No equivalent advantage was either visible or invisible. What, therefore, should they do but first evade and then openly resist?

There was an epoch of evasion. This covered a period of about seventeen years, extending from 1733 to 1750. In the latter year an act was passed by Parliament forbidding the erection of iron works in America. The manufacture of steel was especially interdicted. The measure which was in reality directed against shipbuilding included a provision which forbade the felling of pines outside of enclosures. It was thus sought by indirection to prevent the creation of a merchant marine by the American Colonists and to limit their commerce to British ships. This measure like the Importation Act was also ignored and resisted. For eleven years the Americans persisted in their usual course, making iron, cutting pine timber and building ships, importing molasses and rum, evading the duties, and thus getting themselves into the category of smugglers.

It was this precise condition of affairs which led to a still more stringent measure on the part of the home government. It was determined in Parliament to put an end to the evasion and resistance of the American merchants and importers with respect to the existing laws. The customs should be collected. It was deemed best, however, that the new measure should issue from the judiciary.

An appeal was made to the Court of Exchequer in England for the granting of search warrants to be issued in America by the king's officers for the purpose of ferreting out contraband goods. These warrants granted by the Court of Exchequer were the Writs of Assistance, the name of which appears so frequently and with so much odium in the colonial history of the times. These writs were granted by the court under pressure of the ministry in the year 1760.

The Writs of Assistance were directed to the officers of the customs in America. But any officer could arm one of his subordinates, or indeed any other person whom he should designate, with one of the writs, and the person so appointed might act in the name of the king's officer.

The thing to be done was the examination of any place and all places where contraband goods might be supposed to be lodged. Whether there were evidence or no evidence, the case was the same. The document was a writ of arbitrary search.

Any house, public or private, might be entered at any time; any closet or any cellar might be opened. Neither the bridal chamber nor the room of the dead was sacred on the approach of any petty customs constable or deputy in whose hands a Writ of Assistance had been placed. The antecedent proceedings required no affidavit or any other legal formality. The object was to lay bare the whole privacy of a people on sheer suspicion of smuggling.

It could hardly be supposed that our fathers would tamely submit to such an odious and despotic procedure. To have done so would have been to subscribe to a statute for their own enslavement. Nor may we pass from the consideration of these writs and the resistance offered thereto by the patriots of all our colonies without noticing the un-English character of these laws.