eing landed
contrary to law. When the goods were once on shore, it was difficult to
seize them. So the officers asked the judges to give them writs of
assistance. Among the leading lawyers of Boston was James Otis. He was
the king's law officer in the province. But he resigned his office and
opposed the granting of the writs. He objected to the use of writs of
assistance because they enabled a customs officer to become a tyrant.
Armed with one of them he could go to the house of a man he did not like
and search it from attic to cellar, turn everything upside down and
break open doors and trunks. It made no difference, said Otis, whether
Parliament had said that the writs were legal. For Parliament could not
make an act of tyranny legal. To do that was beyond the power even of
Parliament.

[Sidenote: Patrick Henry. _Eggleston_, 162.]

[Sidenote: His speech in the Parson's Cause, 1763.]

105. The Parson's Cause, 1763.--The next important case arose in
Virginia and came about in this way. The Virginians made a law
regulating the salaries of clergymen in the colony. The king vetoed the
law. The Virginians paid no heed to the veto. The clergy men appealed to
the courts and the case of one of them was selected for trial. Patrick
Henry, a prosperous young lawyer, stated the opinions of the Virginians
in a speech which made his reputation. The king, he said, had no right
to veto a Virginia law that was for the good of the people. To do so was
an act of tyranny, and the people owed no obedience to a tyrant. The
case was decided for the clergyman. For the law was clearly on his side.
But the jurymen agreed with Henry. They gave the clergyman only one
farthing damages, and no more clergymen brought cases into the court.
The king's veto was openly disobeyed.

[Sidenote: Proclamation of 1763. _McMaster_, 110.]

106. The King's Proclamation of 1763.--In the same year that the
Parson's Cause was decided the king issued a proclamation which greatly
lessened the rights of Virginia and several other colonies to western
lands. Some of the old charter lines, as those of Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Virginia, and the Carolinas had extended to the Pacific
Ocean. By the treaty of 1763 (p. 69) the king, for himself and his
subjects, abandoned all claim to lands west of Mississippi River. Now in
the Proclamation of 1763 he forbade the colonial governors to grant any
lands west of the Alleghany Mountains. The western limit of Virginia and
t