Collected Political Writings of James Otis. Otis James
under the frowns of some who have no natural or divine right to be above me and entirely owe their grandeur and honors, to grinding the faces of the poor, and other arts of ill gotten gain and power.
By honest Arts win Honors O my Son!
If not by Tricks, by H——ll, they must be won.
Rem facias, rem, recte si possis quocunque modo rem,11
And honestly get Riches if you can,
At all Events they must be got my Man.
[print edition page 51]
But here endeth the sound of the first triumph. Mr. Y.Z. is less sagacious then he would be tho’t to be, if he don’t know, (and if he don’t) I now tell him, that adding the allowance of 2d. an ounce for coinage, which his Honor very justly takes notice of in his first performance, the result of my calculation will turn out, as it did before, bating a fraction, which none but a quibbling Genius, to return one of his polite and delicate complements, would have thought the subject of a triumph. However, if that calculation was as erroneous as it is exact, it would make nothing to the main argument, which is, Whether gold shall be made a tender here: As to “fixed rates,” which Y.Z. adds, they are nonsense. A tender at an unfixed rate is jargon to a lawyer, as I trust it is to every man of commonsense.
The next mighty thing, is the affair of opposing Sir Isaac Newton to Mr. Locke. Mr. Y.Z. says, “it don’t appear (to him I suppose he means) that Sir Isaac Newton has offered any thing in his representation, that can with propriety be construed to contradict Mr. Locke.” I can’t help that—Sir Isaac’s representation appears very different to me, and I shall in a few minutes submit the affair to all gentlemen and others, which understands Sir Isaac Newton best, he himself, or Mr. Y.Z. I am content to lie under the imputation of writing in a hurry, or of a desire of misrepresentation, in the opinion of Mr. Y.Z. However precipitate or wicked I am, none of the effects of either happen to appear in the inference now to be considered. None much above a Zoophite could have Sir Isaac’s representation before him; carefully read it over as I did, and assert as I have in my first piece, that “upon his representation a guinea was set at 21s.” (and consequently lowered from 21s. 6d. which every body knows was the price before) and has so stood ever since; and yet suppose that Sir Isaac Newton was against lowering gold. Add to this, Sir Isaac’s representation was professedly in favour of lowering gold. I never said, heard or dreamt, that Sir Isaac Newton was against lowering gold, and if Mr. Y.Z. can fairly and clearly show that I have said such a word in any thing I have written, I will strike out the particle, or, and insert, and, in the promise of the premium which he built so many hopes upon!
If his hopes of gain, temporal and spiritual, are no better founded, than most of his inferences, I seriously recommend to his consideration, that it is as hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of Heaven, as for a camel to pass thro’ the eye of a needle. Alas, alas, if longitude is never discovered till Mr. Y.Z. finds it out, wo unto poor mariners, as well as poor lawyers, which I suppose this jokeing scribler will retort in some future elaborate performance. Down anger! be still O my rage and madness, and attend to the dictates of reason.
[print edition page 52]
I am now going to lay before the reader, my inference from Sir Isaac’s representation, the same I made at first, and shall prove it be a just inference. My words are, “It must be owned Mr. Locke is against gold being made money or a tender.” Gaz. Not a word about Mr. Locke’s being of the opinion that the money of gold shou’d be lowered, this would have been impertinent, not only in me, but Mr. Locke too; for he is for annihilating gold as money, which must make the question about lowering the money of gold needless.
I expressed no immoderate triumph from what I then and now conceive to be Sir Isaac’s opinion, to wit, That the king’s coin of gold in England is money, and a tender as well as silver, this I have above proved to be his opinion from his own words, quoted by Y.Z. (and his Honor too) or they are irreconcileable. I only said, I thought it fortunate for me, that Sir Isaac Newton, the only name I should have dared to mention against Mr. Locke, was of a different opinion. What opinion is there expresly referred to? why that of Mr. Locke against gold’s being made “money or a tender,” not a word about lowering gold: Further, if Sir Isaac Newton was of Mr. Locke’s opinion, with regard to expunging the king’s coin of gold, he did not act with integrity, in not hinting a word of so important an opinion in his report.
So the second triumph vanishes like the baseless fabrick of a vision.
The last and most boasted victory of all (and no wonder) is that upon which large money is depending, and much more I confess, than I am worth; but I’ll procure it when due for all that. I know of two or three arts, that will earn the value of the premium, or premiums, before they will be won by Mr. Y.Z. These are a little courtly and miserly, but no matter for that, Horace says they may be used in case of urgent necessity.
His Honor has these words in his first performance, viz. “It may be proper to observe, that whatever is the proportion, between gold and silver bullion, not gold and silver coins, as they are commonly current by tale, in England, the same must be always kept in the colonies, for all we have of both metals, except what is absolutely necessary in trade, will always go to England, and if you set gold too high in the colonies, it will drain you of your silver, if you set it too low, you in effect exclude gold.”
I did promise, and I do again promise to pay any man that “can fairly reconcile to my mind, a perpetual invariable standard, with a perpetual varying price of silver and gold bullion in England, a praemium equal to any that has been appropriated for the discovery of a perpetual motion, the squaring of the circle, or the invention of the longitude”; or all together, as the reader pleases.
There is no need of tables, or reasoning about the matter, the reader is desired only to recollect his ideas of money & of bullion, and remember that no laws of England, or this province, can regulate the price of bullion
[print edition page 53]
(of money they may) and it will be incontestible, that the sense of the word set, used by his Honor, must be a fixing by law i.e. making money of silver and gold, and in this view it will be evident, I am in no danger of losing any money, nor Y.Z. entitled to recover any. His formidable table is at best founded upon nothing better, than begging the main questions in debate, even as he proposes them, viz. whether gold is or shall be a tender; for his table supposes that silver in dollars at 6s. is or ought to be our only standard, which I utterly deny, and have heretofore abundantly proved the contrary. As to the little frigid half born humour about reserving a private right of judging of the demonstration, I must have been very stupid not to have some diffidence about judgment, and judges, when I had charged so great and truly respectable a Name with an inconsistency. I knew that if his Honor could not, or would not deign to reconcile it, that some others would.
I must have been an owl indeed, not to have been sensible, that before I got through the woods, it would be probable I should be attacked by both Hawks and Buzzards in abundance; but if there is none of either brood better than Mr. Y.Z. he acted very prudentially in throwing out his little white flag of truce. Mr. Y.Z. you may go home, split your butterflies, twirl your glass globes, stroke the hyena, and beat the dog till he can’t bark, he is not poor enough yet; and with all your apparatus, and experiments, so long as you can extract an electric spark, its probable you may be impel’d to infinite vain labours, to transmute it into gold or other money, rather than nurse it up to a vital flame. I recommend you to fit persons for your purposes, they are among many others, the students in chymistry, the searchers after the philosopher’s stone, and the worshipful society of gold finders in change alley London.
I am determined not to give my self the least concern about any other anonymous gentry; those who sign at large, are entitled to delicacy and politeness; those who have behaved like Y.Z., are not entitled even to decency.
In fine, I regard his white rag as much as I shou’d the snivelling of a boy, who was ready to ——