HKB
DEAR SIR,
No man could have written from memory Mr. Otis's argument of four or five hours, against the acts of trade, as revenue laws, and against writs of assistants, as a tyrannical engine to execute them, the next day after it was spoken. How awkward, then, would be an attempt to do it after a lapse of fifty seven years? Nevertheless, some of the heads of his discourse are so indelibly imprinted on my mind, that I will endeavour to give you some very short hints of them.
He began with an exordium, containing an apology for his resignation of the office of advocate general in the court of admiralty; and for his appearance in that cause in opposition to the crown, and in favour of the town of Boston, and the merchants of Boston and Salem.
A dissertation on the rights of man in a state of nature. He asserted, that every man, merely natural, was an independent sovereign, subject to no law, but the law written on his heart, and revealed to him by his Maker, in the constitution of his nature, and the inspiration of his understanding and his conscience. His right to his life, his liberty, no created being could rightfully contest. Nor was his right to his property less incontestible. The club that he had snapped from a tree, for a staff or for defence, was his own. His bow and arrow were his own; if by a pebble he had killed a partridge or a squirrel, it was his own. No creature, man or beast, had a right to take it from him. If he had taken an eel, or a smelt, or a sculpion, it was his property. In short, he sported upon this topic with so much wit and humour, and at the same time so much indisputable truth and reason, that he was not less entertaining than instructive. He asserted, that these rights were inherent and inalienable. That they never could be surrendered or alienated but by ideots or madmen, and all the acts of ideots and lunatics were void, and not obligatory by all the laws of God and man. Nor were the poor negroes forgotten. Not a Quaker in Philadelphia, or Mr. Jefferson, of Virginia, ever asserted the rights of negroes in stronger terms. Young as I was, and ignorant as I was, I shuddered at the doctrine he taught; and I have all my life time shuddered, and still shudder, at the consequences that may be drawn from such premises. Shall we say, that the rights of masters and servants clash, and can be decided only by force? I adore the idea of gradual abolitions! But who shall decide how fast or how slowly these abolitions shall be made?