Posted on 07/04/2015 7:12:37 PM PDT by Kaslin
As Americans gather this Independence Day weekend, many will read the Declaration of Independence. When we get to the line, “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance,” we may wish to tip our hats to James Otis.
John Adams wrote about James Otis’ fiery argument in court against the Writs of Assistance in 1761: “[T]he child independence was then and there born.” A 1783 eulogy poem written by Thomas Dawes described Otis as “first in patriot fame.”
The Writs of Assistance, a method of search and seizure known as “general warrants,” were authorized by Parliament. Otis nevertheless called these institutionalized violations of liberty “illegal.” That certainly contrasts with the more milquetoast terms such as “lawless” and “overreach” used today to describe government’s unlawful and unconstitutional acts.
General warrants were used in England to suppress religious and political dissent, and were also being used to regulate and stifle commerce in favor of cronies of the Crown. Boston merchants hired Otis, previously the government’s lawyer, to argue their case. Otis called the Writs of Assistance “the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law-book.”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
In the early days we had a poster with that screen name.
I hope he didn’t up like his namesake.
As I recall they were both a little crazy toward their ends.
A British sword to the noggin will do that to you.
Featured in Disney’s “Johnny Tremain.”
and James Jackson (Ga.)
Debates in the House of Representatives on the First Report on Public Credit 9–18 February 1790
James Jackson (Ga.)
But it is doubted with me whether a permanent funded debt is beneficial or not to any country.
The same effect must be produced that has taken place in other nations; it must either bring on a national bankruptcy or annihilate her existence as an independent empire. Hence I contend, sir, that a funding system, in this country, will be highly dangerous to the welfare of the republic; it may, for a moment, raise our credit and increase the circulation, by multiplying a new species of currency; but it must, in times afterward, settle upon our posterity a burthen which they can neither bear nor relieve themselves from. It will establish a precedent in America that may, and in all probability will, be pursued by the sovereign authority until it brings upon us that ruin which it has never failed to bring, or is inevitably bringing, upon all the nations of the earth who have had the temerity to make the experiment.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/875
6. But the grand nostrum will be a public debt…
11. As soon as sufficient progress in the intended change shall have been made, and the public mind duly prepared according to the rules already laid down, it will be proper to venture on another and a bolder step toward a removal of the constitutional landmarks.
Rules for Radicals? No, Rules for Changing a Limited Republican Government into an Unlimited Hereditary One
http://www.constitution.org/cmt/freneau/republic2monarchy.htm
The recent book “Arsonist” was a great book about Otis!
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