Here is the key to the position of Otis and the ultimately prevailing stance of revolutionary America. God gives people their fundamental rights, including the right to property. Knowing the limitations and weaknesses of Man, God ordained government to protect the civil rights of freeborn men and women. The "administrators of [that government] were originally the whole people; that they might have devolved it on whom they pleased." Within that context, any rightful or valid government is accountable to the people and achieves its authority via the consent of its subjects. In order to have that consent and to achieve its just ends, government must be close to the people. It must be representative of the people over which it governs. Parliament fails that basic test. Further, "that by [the English Constitution] every man in the dominions is a free man; that no parts of His Majesty's dominions can be taxed without their consent; that every part has a right to be represented in the supreme or some subordinate legislature; that the refusal of this would seem to be a contradiction in practice to the theory of the constitution." He concludes that a renewed acknowledgement of and commitment to these fundamental principles of government and British common law would "firmly unite all parts of the British empire in the greater peace and prosperity, and render it invulnerable and perpetual."
Agree with him or not, James Otis was not driven to these words by greed or power. He was cause-motivated. Having gone through the exhaustive process of developing a personalized, yet sound legal philosophy steeped in English common law tradition, Otis was guided by an enthusiasm for what he believed in. His was a sincere commitment to the fundamental and constitutional rights of the colonists as full-fledged British subjects. Because of that burning passion, James Otis is the man most responsible for energizing the colonists in their resistance to British imperial authority and laying the groundwork for massive resistance to parliamentary taxation.
Our next article will focus in depth on the Stamp Act, and introduce two other hugely influential leaders of the colonial protest movement: Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry.
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Selected bibliography:
Morgan, Edmund S., The Challenge of the American Revolution
Otis, James, The Rights of the British Colonists Asserted and Proved*
*Read the full text of Rights at the following web site:
http://occ.awlonline.com/bookbind/pubboo...
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