Collected Political Writings of James Otis. Otis James
whose malice and ill designs against this province and its liberties, is much less unbounded than their riches and power, tho these are great enough. I know the worst I have to fear from them, and defy them: I have been guilty of no offence, but speaking my mind in favour of the rights of the people.
I am and will be at all times ready, when lawfully called, to speak write, fight, and die, for my country and for the cities of my God; and if I fall in such a conflict, I hope I shan’t fall in the total ruin of my country. My
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consolation will be at least that of a Roman, and I trust of a Briton and a Christian also.
JAMES OTIS, junr.
From a late ENGLISH Print
Of Government, and upon what Freedom depends.
THERE is nothing in which the Generality of Mankind are so much mistaked as when they talk of Government: The different affects of it are obvious to every one; but few can trace its Causes. Most Men having indigested Ideas of the Nature of it, attribute all public Miscarriages to the Corruption of Mankind. They think the whole Mass is infected; that it is impossible to make any Reformation; and so submit patiently to their Country’s Calamities, or else share in the spoil. Whereas, Complaints of this Kind are as old as the World, and as every Age has thought their own the worst; we have not only our own Experience, but the Example of all Times, to prove, that Man in the same Circumstances will do the same Things, call them by what Names of Distinction you please. A Government is a mere Piece of Clock-Work; and having such Springs and Wheels, must act in such a Manner: And therefore the Art is, to constitute it so that it must move to the public Advantage.
It is certain, that every Man will act for his own Interest and all wise Governments are founded upon that Principle: So that this whole Mystery is only to make the Interest of the Governors and governed the same.
In an absolute Monarchy where the whole Power is in one Man, the Interest will be only regarded; in an Aristocracy, the Interest of a few; and in a free Government the Interest of every one.
The Freedom of this Kingdom depends upon the People’s chusing the House of Commons, who are a Part of the Legislature and have the whole Power of giving Money. Were this a Representative, and free from external Force or private Bribery, nothing could pass there but what they thought was for the public Advantage. For their own Interest is so interwoven with the People’s, that if they act for themselves, (which every one of them will do as near as he can) they must act for the common Interest of England: And if a few among them should find it their Interest to abuse their Power, it will be the Interest of all the rest to punish them for it. And then our Government
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would act mechanically, and a Rogue would as necessarily be hanged, as a Clock strike Twelve when the Hour is come.
January 31, 1763
Mess’rs Printers. The ingenious Author and grand Architect of that wonderful Work, signed A.Z. and lodged at Messrs. Fleets Printing Office, for the free Inspection of the Members of a certain Great Assembly, and others, is vehemently suspected to be a tall slender, fair complexioned, fair-spoken “very good Gentleman.”* His Beauty has captivated half the pretty Ladies, and his Finess more than half the pretty Gentlemen in the Province.—He has with great success both in Theory and Practice, made Money the Subject of his Contemplation, and the Object of his Wishes for some Years. He is judged to be very fond of being chosen Agent himself, only in order to rise higher. Should he fail in that View, he will give his Interest to any Man rather than to a Dissenter. The Arts of Hypocrisy and Chicanery he has cultivated and improved to Perfection. The Principles of arbitrary Power descended to him from his Ancestors; the Nourishment of a perpetual Dictator flow’d from his Mother’s Breasts, and the Maximum aut Caesar aut Nullus,† was inscribed upon his swaddling Bands.
This famous Performance ’tis tho’t, was only ushered to the Press by a certain stuttering Military Scribe, a notorious Tool, who, as the Eccho of some of his Master’s lately attack’d no less a Character than that of Ld. B——e, publickly declaring in a large political Club, that it was “no credit to Israel Mauduit, Esq: or any one else, to be known to Ld B—— for that his Lordship was the Author of all the Disturbances in England.” A.Z. is supposed to have partly furnished with his Anecdotes, by a young lean Exporter of Dollars, lately arrived from his Tour through Great Britain and Ireland. Coelum non animum nutai qui trans mare currit.12 Too many of our young Gentlemen go abroad as wise as Hobby-Horses, and except a little sounding Brass and a few tinckling Symbols, return without any Acquisition of Capital Stock.‡
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Messieurs PRINTERS,
Please to give the following a Place in your next.
“See Lawless Pow’r, the haughty Tyrant’s Pride
With Whips and Scorpions arm’d triumphant ride!
The Infant’s Cry, the Orphan’s bitter Tear,
The Father’s Care, the tender Mother’s Fear,
The Hope of Youth, the Wish of hoary Age,
Are all hiss’d off from —— sordid stage”
The agent for this Province has been grossly and scandalously affronted, by an advertisement, in an Evening Post of January last. The conduct in that affair was abundantly more injurious than publishing the piece referred to, would have been. The manuscript was indeed shown to many; but those who did not see it, were left to guess the worst. Had it been printed, it would have appeared the most jejune puerile grubstreet performance that ever had birth, from the cave of poverty, to the pamper’d sleepy palaces of the rich, the great, and the wicked.
The publishers of the advertisement have not been call’d to account for their behaviour; nor do we read of any motion for a reprimand made by master secretary at war, or of any minatory visit made them by the pretended attorney general.*
I will venture to say, any other printer in the province would have run the risque of a severe prosecution, for saying half so much of a late Agent. Messieurs Edes and Gill were dictatorially threatened with the lash of the law, only for publishing a piece, which some prodigious wiseacres imagined there was a mistake, tho’ there was none; and even had it been as the conjurers on the other side imagined, it would have amounted to no more than this, viz. It should have been affected, that an “application to Parliament was despair’d of, without a recommendation from the treasury, which recommendation was despair’d of”; instead of “absolute despair”: Which last, however, there was ground for it being pretty unlikely that a Gentleman should obtain payment from a board that had paid so little regard to his solicitations, as not to give him a recommendation.
Mr. Mauduit’s letter, expressly, without any qualification, says, He had been told the affair was despair’d of. Who so likely to tell him this, as his predecessor?
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The Publishers of the Evening-Post, and their correspondents, have indiscriminately villify’d every Gentleman on “our side,” as some of them are pleased to express it. All this, if done without promise of reward (which is much doubted) is also without any danger of punishment. But their forgiveness and safety don’t flow from “any uncommon goodness of heart or generous compassion to the weakness and folly of impotent enemies,” by which those excellent wretches, their honourable patrons and benefactors, could ever be distinguish’d.
The true grounds of the safety of the