It was in the course of this pamphlet that the Mr. Otis spoke so strongly on taxation and representation. "The very act of taxing," said he, "exercised over those who are not represented, appears to me to be depriving them of one of their most essential rights; and, if continued seems to be, in effect, an entire disfranchisement of every civil right. 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?"[2]
In this was the germ of the stern resistance offered by the
Americans to the Stamp Act. No man in the colonies did so much
to confute the principles on which the Stamp Act rested as did
James Otis.
When the General Assembly of Massachusetts met in May of 1765, Governor Bernard urged in his address the duty of submission to Parliament as to the "conservators of liberty." It was this recommendation which being referred to a Committee, of which Otis was a member, led to the adoption of a resolution for the holding of a Colonial Congress in New York.
Nine colonies accepted the invitation of Massachusetts, and James Otis headed the delegation of three members chosen to represent the mother colony in that prophetic body.
The story of the contest of the Americans with the home government on the subject of the Stamp Act is well known. The controversy resulted on the 18th of March, 1766, in the repeal of the Act by Parliament. But the repeal was accompanied with a salvo to British obduracy in the form of a declaration that Parliament had "the right to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever."
Notwithstanding this hateful addendum, the repeal of the Act was received in America with the greatest joy. During the excitement antecedent to the repeal, mobs had surged through the streets of Boston, building bonfires and burning effigies of officers and other adherents of the king's party. In one of these ebullitions, the house of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson was attacked and pillaged. The better people had nothing to do with it. Many were arrested and imprisoned.
Governor Bernard was so much alarmed that he declared himself to be a governor only in name. The partisans of the crown started a story that James Otis was the instigator of the riots. There is a hint to this effect in Hutchinson's "History of Massachusetts Bay." But it is evident that the charge was unfounded—except in this, that in times of public excitement the utterances of orators are frequently wrested from their purpose by the ignorant and made to do service in the cause of anarchy.
Meanwhile on the first of November, Mr. Otis returned from the
Congress in New York, laid a copy of the proceedings before the
Assembly, and was formally thanked for his services.
During the Stamp Act year, Mr. Otis found time to compose two pamphlets setting forth his views on the great questions of the day. There had recently appeared a letter written by a Halifax gentleman and addressed to a Rhode Island friend. The latter personage was unknown; the former was ascertained to be a certain Mr. Howard. The so-called "Letter" was written with much ability and in a bitter spirit.
To this Otis replied with great asperity, and with his power of invective untrammeled. He called his pamphlet "A Vindication of the British Colonies against the Aspersions of the Halifax Gentleman, in his Letter to a Rhode Island Friend." A single passage from the work may serve to show the cogency of the writer's style and especially his anticipation of the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence.