HKB
endure. Colonies universally, ardently breathe for independence. No man, who has a soul will ever live in a colony, under the present establishments, one moment longer than necessity compels him.
But I must return to Mr. Otis. The burthen of his song was "Writs of assistance." All these rigorous statutes were now to be carried into rigorous execution by the still more vigorous instruments of arbitrary power, "Writs of assistance."
Here arose a number of very important questions. What were writs of assistance? Where were they to be found? When, where, and by what authority had they been invented, created, and established? Nobody could answer any of these questions.--Neither chief justice Hutchinson, nor any one of his four associate judges, pretended to have ever read or seen in any book any such writ, or to know any thing about it. The court had ordered or requested the bar to search for precedents and authorities for it, but none were found. Otis pronounced boldly, that there were none, and neither judge nor lawyer, bench or bar, pretended to confute him. He asserted farther, that there was no colour of authority for it, but one produced by Mr. Gridley in a statute of the 13th and 14th of Charles the second, which Mr. Otis said was neither authority, precedent or colour of either, in America. Mr. Thatcher said he had diligently searched all the books, but could find no such writ. He had indeed found in Rastalls Entries, a thing which in some of its features resembling this, but so little like it in the whole, that it was not worth while to read it.
Mr. Gridley, who, no doubt, was furnished, upon this great and critical occasion, with all the information possessed by the governor, lieutenant governor, secretary, custom house officers, and all other crown officers, produced, the statute of the thirteenth and fourteenth of Charles the second, chapter eleventh, entitled, "An Act to prevent frauds, and regulating abuses in his majesty's customs."