* *

The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a gentleman or
a man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life
itself, to the sacred calls of his country. The glowing and oft-quoted
eulogy of John Adams on this great argument, which is said to have
lasted nearly five hours, is a commonplace of history, but we cannot
forbear repeating it. Otis was a flame of fire; 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 impetuous eloquence,
he hurried away all before him. American independence was then and there
born. Every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away
as I did, ready to take up arms against the "writs of assistance." The
speech, says Bowen, "gave vitality and shape to the dim sense of
oppression and wrong from the mother country, which already rested
indistinctly on the minds of the colonists." "It breathed," says Adams,
"into this nation the breath of life."

The effect, however, which John Adams and other admirers of Otis have
ascribed to his great legal triumph was obviously not the one Otis
himself intended it to produce. There was, after all, something
exceedingly vague and uncertain about his attitude and principles as a
politician and a statesman. His contemporaries felt this, and somewhat
unfeelingly accused him of inconsistency. At one time he was equally
censured by his friends and by foes. In his "_Vindication of the Conduct
of the House of Representatives of the Province of Massachusetts Bay_,"
published in 1762, occurs the following: "The British Constitution of
government, as now established in His Majesty's person and family, is
the wisest and best in the world. The King of Great Britain is the best
and most glorious monarch upon the globe, and his subjects the happiest
in the universe." And yet Lord Mansfield, whose marble figure stands
proudly among those of other distinguished Englishmen in the corridor of
the British House of Commons, defended him in Parliament, not as a
loyalist, but as a revolutionist. "Otis" said he, "is a man of
consequence among the people over there. It was said the man is mad.
What then? One madman often makes many. Massaniello was mad, nobody
doubts; yet for all that he overturned the government of Naples."
Friends of the government on bot