One Man Against an Empire
which consequently obliged them to think about the relation which they bore to the body which threatened them." Until that point, the American colonists had not had much need to think too much about Parliament. Now, that had changed - and it had changed suddenly.
Many reputable historians claim that early colonial opposition to parliamentary taxation broke down into two distinctions: a tacit, if ambiguous acknowledgement of the legality of external taxes, but a fervent resistance to internal taxes. These historians then criticize the colonists, in retrospect, for adjusting this distinction as Parliament tried new taxes. For James Otis, however, there was never any such distinction. Otis reacted to the external taxes of the Sugar Act and the implied internal taxes of the future the same way. He opposed them.
While the official address, passed by the Massachusetts legislature in November 1764, to the British House of Commons on the Sugar Act was unclear on the issue of internal taxation, Otis was anything but unclear. In fact, due to pressure from Hutchinson and Bernard, the Massachusetts legislature toned down the language of its address to the extent that many, including Otis, felt that it didn't accurately represent their sentiments. So, in addition to passing its official address, the legislature also forwarded to its agent in London a copy of a pamphlet authored by James Otis. The pamphlet was entitled The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved. In that pamphlet, Otis denied any fundamental difference between internal and external taxes. In fact, he declared unequivocally that "there is no foundation for the distinction some make in England, between an internal and an external tax on the colonies."
Many critics of the Founders dismiss The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved as propaganda. They fail to assess it for its own merit against the backdrop of British common law traditions. Seen in this light, Otis's claims that the American colonists were entitled to the same legal and civil rights as English citizens was not unreasonable or far-fetched.
In 1765, Grenville kept his word and Parliament passed the Stamp Act. Otis was one of the Act's most vocal critics, calling for a continental assembly of delegates from other colonies to speak out against the Stamp Tax. But leadership of the colonial protest movement slowly began to change. Otis began to share the spotlight with other emerging leaders, among them a businessman and master
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