stance_ to revenue officers. These were warrants to custom-house
officials, giving them and their deputies a general power to enter
houses and stores where it might be suspected that contraband goods were
concealed. This was a violation of one of the dearest principles of
Magna Charta which recognizes the house of every Briton as his castle.
The idea of such latitude being given to "the meanest deputy of a
deputy's deputy" created general indignation and alarm. It might cover
the grossest abuses, and no man's privacy would be free from the
intrusions of these ministerial hirelings. The colonies saw in this the
budding germ of despotism, and resolved to oppose its growth. The voice
of James Otis the younger, a ripe scholar of six-and-thirty, and then
the Advocate General of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, first denounced
the scheme and declared the great political postulate which became the
basis of all subsequent resistance to kingly domination, that "TAXATION,
WITHOUT REPRESENTATION, IS TYRANNY." Like the deep and startling tones
of an alarm-bell, echoing from hill to hill, his bold eloquence aroused
the hearts of thinking men from the Penobscot to the St. Mary; and his
published arguments, like an electric shock, thrilled every nerve in the
Atlantic provinces. "Otis was a flame of fire," said John Adams, in
describing the scene in the Massachusetts Assembly, when the orator
uttered his denunciations. "With a promptitude of classical allusion and
a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events and dates, a
profusion of legal authority, a prophetic glance of his eyes into
futurity and a rapid torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away all
before him. The seeds of patriots and heroes were then and there sown.
Every man of an immensely crowded audience appeared to me to go away, as
I did, ready to take up arms against _Writs of Assistance_. 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. In fifteen years, that is, in 1776, he grew up
to manhood, and declared himself free."

[Illustration: JAMES OTIS.]

Poor Otis! The bludgeon of a ministerial myrmidon paralyzed his
brilliant intellect, and he was not allowed to participate in the scenes
of the Revolution which ensued. Just as the white banner of peace began
to wave over his country, after a struggle of twenty years to which he
gave the first impul