empt to enforce
the Acts of Trade. Grenville had made up his narrow mind that the
colonies should be compelled to adhere to the conditions which obliged
them to trade with England only for England's principal manufactures.
There should be no more smuggling from Spanish America, no more
smuggling from the West Indies. To enforce this determination, which
deprived the colonists at a blow of the most profitable part of their
trade, the Government employed certain general search warrants, which,
if strictly legal in the letter, were conceived in a spirit highly
calculated to goad a proud people into illegal defiance. They goaded
one proud man into active protest. A distinguished servant of the
Government, James Otis, the King's Advocate, resigned his office in
order that he might be at liberty to denounce the Writs of Assistance.
{85} Otis may have been technically wrong in resisting the Writs of
Assistance, but it can scarcely be questioned that as a philosophic
politician, who was devoted to the interests of his countrymen, he was
ethically in the right. Otis was thirty-six years old; he was known to
his compatriots as a graduate of Harvard, an able lawyer, a zealous
student of classical literature, and an author of repute on Latin
prosody. The issue of the Writs of Assistance converted the respected
and respectable public servant into a conspicuous statesman as hotly
applauded by the one side as he was execrated by the other. A single
speech lifted him from an esteemed obscurity to a leading place among
the champions of colonial rights against imperial aggressions. The
assemblage which Otis addressed, which Otis dominated, was forever
memorable in the history of America. "Otis was a flame of fire." The
words are the words of one who was a young man when Otis spoke, who
listened and took notes as the words fell from Otis's lips. "With a
promptitude of classical allusions, a depth of research, a rapid
summary of historical events and dates, a profusion of legal
authorities, a prophetic glance of his eyes into futurity, and a rapid
torrent of tempestuous eloquence, he hurried away all before him. Then
and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the
arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child
Independence was born. Every man of an immense crowded audience
appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take up arms against Writs
of Assistance."

The youth who took notes of the