(From The Patriotic Reader, J. B. Lippincott & Co., Phila.)
During the agitation of 1765, concerning the British Stamp Act, a convention of its opponents was assembled in New York City under the name of “The Stamp Act Congress.” Among the most conspicuous of the delegates from the Massachusetts Colony was James Otis. As early as 1761 he protested so earnestly against permitting the British officers of the customs to have “writs of assistance” in their enforcement of the British revenue laws, that John Adams, who listened to his argument, thus described it:
“Otis was a flame of fire! With a promptitude of classical allusions, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events and dates, a profusion of legal authorities, a prophetic glance of his eye into futurity, and a rapid torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away all before him. Every man of an immense audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take up arms against any ‘writs of assistance.’”
The all-absorbing sentiment of his life, the wealth of his diction, and the fire of his oratory have been embodied in a form which stands among the best of American classics. In the romance of “The Rebels,” Miss Lydia Maria Francis (afterwards Mrs. Child) introduces James Otis as a leading character. After the opening statement, that “there was hurrying to and fro through the streets of Boston on the night of the 14th of August, 1765,” his patriotic American woman shows such a right conception of the power and oratory of Otis, as well as of the actual tone and spirit of his times, that the fragments of her hero’s conversation during the story, gathered in the form of a speech, have often been mistaken for some actual appeal to the people of his period. The youth of America will do well to keep it fresh in mind, and thereby honor both its author and its subject.
England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the steps of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. Arbitrary principles, like those against which we now contend, have cost one king of England his life, another his crown, and they may yet cost a third his most flourishing colonies.
We are two millions, one-fifth fighting-men. We are bold and vigorous, and we call no man master. To the nation from whom we are proud to derive our origin we ever were, and we ever will be, ready to yield unforced assistance; but it must not, and it never can be extorted.
Some have sneeringly asked, Are the Americans too poor to pay a few pounds on stamped paper? No! America, thanks to God and herself, is rich. But the right to take ten pounds implies the right to take a thousand; and what must be the wealth that avarice, aided by power, cannot exhaust? True, the specter is now small; but the shadow he casts before him is huge enough to darken all this fair land.
Others, in sentimental style, talk of the immense debt of gratitude which we owe to England. And what is the amount of this debt? Why, truly, it is the same that the young lion owes to the dam which has brought it forth on the solitude of the mountain, or left it amid the winds and storms of the desert.
We plunged into the wave, with the great charter of freedom in our teeth, because the fagot and torch were behind us. We have waked this new world from its savage lethargy; forests have been prostrated in our path; towns and cities have grown up suddenly as the flowers of the tropics; and the fires in our autumnal woods are scarcely more rapid than the increase of our wealth and population.
And do we owe all this to the kind succor of the mother-country? No; we owe it to the tyranny that drove us from her; to the pelting storms which invigorated our helpless infancy!
But perhaps others will say, We ask no money from your gratitude; we only demand that you should pay your own expenses. And who, I pray, is to judge of their necessity? Why, the king! (And, with all due reverence to his sacred majesty, he understands the real wants of his distant subjects as little as he does the language of the Choctaws.) Who is to judge concerning the frequency of these demands? The ministry. Who is to judge whether the money is properly expended? The cabinet behind the throne.
In every instance, those who take are to judge for those who pay. If this system is suffered to go into operation, we shall have reason to esteem it a great privilege that rain and dew do not depend upon Parliament; otherwise, they would soon be taxed and dried.
But, thanks to God! There is freedom enough left upon earth to resist such monstrous injustice. The flame of liberty is extinguished in Greece and Rome, but the light of its glowing embers is still bright and strong on the shores of America. Actuated by its sacred influence, we will resist unto death.
But we will not countenance anarchy and misrule. The wrongs that a desperate community have heaped upon their enemies shall be amply and speedily repaired. Still, it is lighted in these colonies which one breath of their king may kindle into such fury that the blood of all England cannot extinguish it.
The time will certainly come when the fated separation between the mother-country and these colonies must take place, whether you will or no, for it is so decreed by the very nature of things, by the progressive increase of our population, the fertility of our soil, the extent of our territory, the industry of our countrymen, and the immensity of the ocean which separates the two countries. And if this be true, as it is most true, who does not see that the sooner it takes place the better?—that it would be the height of folly not to seize the present occasion, when British injustice has filled all hearts with indignation, inspired all minds with courage, united all opinions in one, and put arms in every hand? And how long must we traverse three thousand miles of a stormy sea to solicit of arrogant and insolent men either counsel, or commands to regulate our domestic affairs? From what we have already achieved it is easy to presume what we shall hereafter accomplish. Experience is the source of sage counsels, and liberty is the mother of great men. Have you not seen the enemy driven from Lexington by citizens armed and assembled in one day? Already their most celebrated generals have yielded in Boston to the skill of ours. Already their seamen, repulsed from our coasts, wander over the ocean, the sport of tempests and the prey of famine. Let us hail the favorable omen, and fight, not for the sake of knowing on what terms we are to be the slaves of England, but to secure to ourselves a free existence, to found a just and independent government.
Why do we longer delay? why still deliberate? Let this most happy day give birth to the American Republic. Let her arise, not to devastate and conquer, but to reëstablish the reign of peace and the laws. The eyes of Europe are fixed upon us; she demands of us a living example of freedom that may contrast, by the felicity of her citizens, with the ever-increasing tyranny which desolates her polluted shores. She invites us to prepare an asylum where the unhappy may find solace and the persecuted repose. She entreats us to cultivate a propitious soil, where that generous plant which first sprang up and grew in England, but is now withered by the poisonous blasts of Scottish tyranny, may revive and flourish, sheltering under its salubrious and interminable shade all the unfortunate of the human race. This is the end presaged by so many omens; by our first victories; by the present ardor and union; by the flight of Howe, and the pestilence which broke out among Dunmore’s people; by the very winds which baffled the enemy’s fleets and transports, and that terrible tempest which engulfed seven hundred vessels upon the coast of Newfoundland.
If we are not this day wanting in our duty to our country, the names of the American legislators will be placed, by posterity, at the side of those of Theseus, of Lycurgus, of Romulus, of Numa, of the three Williams of Nassau, and of all those whose memory has been and will be forever dear to virtuous men and good citizens.
(In Parliament, January 20, 1775)
My Lords:
These papers, brought to your table at so late a period of this business, tell us what? Why, what all the world knew before: that the Americans, irritated by repeated injuries, and stripped of their inborn rights and dearest privileges, have resisted, and entered into associations for the preservation of their common liberties.
Had the early situation of the people of Boston been attended to, things would not have come to this. But the infant complaints of Boston were literally treated like the capricious squalls of a child, who, it is said, did not know whether it was aggrieved or not.
But full well I knew, at that time, that this child, if not redressed, would soon assume the courage and voice of a man. Full well I knew that the sons of ancestors, born under the same free constitution and once breathing the same liberal air as Englishmen, would resist upon the same principles and on the same occasions.
What has government done? They have sent an armed force consisting of seventeen thousand men, to dragoon the Bostonians into what is called their duty; and, so far from once turning their eyes to the policy and destructive consequence of this scheme, are constantly sending out more troops. And we are told, in the language of menace, that if seventeen thousand men won’t do, fifty thousand shall.
It is true, my lords, with this force they may ravage the country, waste and destroy as they march; but, in the progress of fifteen hundred miles, can they occupy the places they have passed? Will not a country which can produce three millions of people, wronged and insulted as they are, start up like hydras in every corner, and gather fresh strength from fresh opposition?
Nay, what dependence can you have upon the soldiery, the unhappy engines of your wrath? They are Englishmen, who must feel for the privileges of Englishmen. Do you think that these men can turn their arms against their brethren? Surely no. A victory must be to them a defeat, and carnage a sacrifice.
But it is not merely three millions of people, the produce of America, we have to contend with in this unnatural struggle; many more are on their side, dispersed over the face of this wide empire. Every Whig in this country and in Ireland is with them.
In this alarming crisis I come with this paper in my hand to offer you the best of my experience and advice; which is, that a humble petition be presented to his Majesty, beseeching him that, in order to open the way toward a happy settlement of the dangerous troubles in America, it may graciously please him that immediate orders be given to General Gage for removing his Majesty’s force from the town of Boston.
Such conduct will convince America that you mean to try her cause in the spirit of freedom and inquiry, and not in letters of blood.
There is no time to be lost. Every hour is big with danger. Perhaps, while I am now speaking, the decisive blow is struck which may involve millions in the consequence. And, believe me, the very first drop of blood which is shed will cause a wound which may never be healed.
When your lordships look at the papers transmitted to us from America, when you consider their firmness, decency, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause and wish to make it your own. For myself, I must affirm, declare, and avow that, in all my reading and observation (and it has been my favorite study, for I have read Thucydides, and have studied and admired the master-states of the world), I say, I must declare that, for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, under such a complication of difficult circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the General Congress at Philadelphia. I trust it is obvious to your lordships that all attempts to impose servitude upon such men, to establish despotism, over such a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal.
We shall be forced, ultimately, to retract. Let us retract while we can, not when we must. I say we must necessarily undo these violent, oppressive acts. They Must be repealed. You Will repeal them. I pledge myself for it that you will, in the end, repeal them. I stake my reputation on it. I will consent to be taken for an idiot if they are not finally repealed.
EDMUND BURKE, IN PARLIAMENT, MARCH 22, 1775
We are called again, as it were by a superior warning voice, to attend to America, and to review the subject with an unusual degree of calmness. Surely, it is an awful subject, or there is none this side the grave. The proposition is peace; not peace hunted through the medium of war, but peace sought in its natural course, in its ordinary haunts, and laid in principles purely pacific. I propose to restore the former unsuspecting confidence of the colonies in the mother-country, and reconcile them each to each. My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron.
Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government; they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it once be understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another; that these two things may exist without any mutual relation; and the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution.
As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have. The more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience.
Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But until you become lost to all feelings of your true interest and your national dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly.
This is the true Act of Navigation, which binds to you the commerce of the colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire.
Do not entertain so weak an imagination as that your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your sufferances, your cockets and your clearances, are what form the great securities of your commerce. Do not dream that your letters of office, and your instructions, and your suspending clauses, are the things that hold together the great contexture of this mysterious whole.
These things do not make your government, dead instruments, passive tools as they are; it is the spirit of the English constitution that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the English constitution which, infused, through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member.
Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us here in England? Do you imagine, then, that it is the land tax which raises your revenue? that it is the annual vote in the committee of supply which gives you your army? or that it is the mutiny bill which inspires it with bravery and discipline?
No! surely no! It is the love of the people, it is their attachment to their government from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience without which your army would be a base rabble and your navy nothing but rotten timber.
All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians who have no place among us; a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material, and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine.
But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master principles, which in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned have no substantial existence, are, in truth, everything and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom, and a great empire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious of our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our place as becomes our station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our public proceedings on America with the old warning of the church, Sursum corda![5] We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of Providence has called us.
By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire, and have made the most extensive and the only honorable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness, of the human race.
(Mr. Henry in the Convention of Delegates of Virginia, March 23, 1775, urges that the colony be immediately put in a state of defense.)
This, sir, is no time for ceremony. The question before the house is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at this time through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country and of an act of disloyalty towards the majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.
Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And, judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the house? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourself how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land.
Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation, the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can the gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging.
And what have we to oppose them. Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable, but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer.
Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm that is now coming on. We have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded, and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne.
In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending, if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!...
They tell us, sir, that we are weak—unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.
Three millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us.
The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable, and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace. The war has actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that the gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
(The following note in explanation of proper names, etc., in this poem is copied from Duyckinck’s edition of Freneau.)
Note.—Sir James Wallace, Admiral Graves, and Captain Montague, were British naval officers, employed on our coast. The Viper and Rose were vessels in the service. Lord Dunmore, the last royal governor of Virginia, had recently in April, 1775, removed the public stores from Williamsburg, and, in conjunction with a party of adherents, supported by the naval force on the station, was making war on the province. William Tryon, the last Royal governor of New York, informed of a resolution of the Continental Congress: “That it be recommended to the several provincial assemblies in conventions and councils, or committees of safety, to arrest and secure every person in their respective colonies whose going at large may, in their opinion, endanger the safety of the colony or the liberties of America,” discerning the signs of the times, took refuge on board the Halifax packet in the harbor, and left the city in the middle of October, 1775.