himself. Then he could go
and break into the houses and seize the goods, and if need be summon the
sheriff and his _posse_ to help him in overcoming and browbeating the
owner. The writ of assistance was therefore an abominable instrument of
tyranny. Such writs had been allowed by a statute of the evil reign of
Charles II.; a statute of William III. had clothed custom-house officers
in the colonies with like powers to those which they possessed in
England; and neither of these statutes had been repealed. There can
therefore be little doubt that the issue of such search-warrants was
strictly legal, unless the authority of Parliament to make laws for the
colonies was to be denied.

[Sidenote: James Otis.]

James Otis then held the crown office of advocate-general, with an ample
salary and prospects of high favour from government. When the revenue
officers called upon him, in view of his position, to defend their
cause, he resigned his office and at once undertook to act as counsel
for the merchants of Boston in their protest against the issue of the
writs. A large fee was offered him, but he refused it. "In such a
cause," said he, "I despise all fees." The case was tried in the
council-chamber at the east end of the old town-hall, or what is now
known as the "Old State-House," in Boston. Chief-justice Hutchinson
presided, and Jeremiah Gridley, one of the greatest lawyers of that day,
argued the case for the writs in a very powerful speech. The reply of
Otis, which took five hours in the delivery, was one of the greatest
speeches of modern times. It went beyond the particular legal question
at issue, and took up the whole question of the constitutional relations
between the colonies and the mother-country. At the bottom of this, as
of all the disputes that led to the Revolution, lay the ultimate
question whether Americans were bound to yield obedience to laws which
they had no share in making. This question, and the spirit that answered
it flatly and doggedly in the negative, were heard like an undertone
pervading all the arguments in Otis's wonderful speech, and it was
because of this that the young lawyer John Adams, who was present,
afterward declared that on that day "the child Independence was born."
Chief-justice Hutchinson was a man of great ability and as sincere a
patriot as any American of his time. He could feel the force of Otis's
argument, but he believed that Parliament was the supreme legislative
body f