derives
its authority from that constitution, it should seem that no laws can
be made or executed that are repugnant to any essential law in
Nature." The writer of these words, James Otis, is the founder of the
revolutionary doctrine. Describing one of his pamphlets, the second
President says: "Look over the declaration of rights and wrongs issued
by Congress in 1774; look into the declaration of independence in
1776; look into the writings of Dr. Price and Dr. Priestley; look into
all the French constitutions of government; and, to cap the climax,
look into Mr. Thomas Paine's _Common Sense_, _Crisis_, and _Rights of
Man_. What can you find that is not to be found in solid substance in
this 'Vindication of the House of Representatives'?" When these men
found that the appeal to the law and to the constitution did not avail
them, that the king, by bribing the people's representatives with the
people's money, was able to enforce his will, they sought a higher
tribunal, and turned from the law of England to the law of Nature, and
from the king of England to the King of kings. Otis, in 1762, 1764
and 1765, says: "Most governments are, in fact, arbitrary, and
consequently the curse and scandal of human nature; yet none are of
right arbitrary. By the laws of God and nature, government must not
raise taxes on the property of the people without the consent of the
people or their deputies. There can be no prescription old enough to
supersede the law of Nature and the grant of God Almighty, who has
given all men a right to be free. If a man has but little property to
protect and defend, yet his life and liberty are things of some
importance." About the same time Gadsden wrote: "A confirmation of our
essential and common rights as Englishmen may be pleaded from charters
clearly enough; but any further dependence on them may be fatal. We
should stand upon the broad common ground of those natural rights that
we all feel and know as men and as descendants of Englishmen."

The primitive fathers of the United States began by preferring
abstract moral principle to the letter of the law and the spirit of
the Constitution. But they went farther. Not only was their grievance
difficult to substantiate at law, but it was trivial in extent. The
claim of England was not evidently disproved, and even if it was
unjust, the injustice practically was not hard to bear. The suffering
that would be caused by submission was immeasurably less than the