Poputonian for Digby: History Rhymes

Guest Post by poputonian

Boston attorney James Otis was especially offended. The British were free people. When he argued in 1761 against the Writ of Assistance, that scurrilous document which allowed the British government access to a citizen's home and personal records -- without having first obtained a court issued warrant -- Otis used the British constitution as evidence that the writs were illegal.

He did not make any claims that Americans were unique and deserved special freedoms, but instead asserted the rights of the British citizen, of which he and the others in Massachusetts Bay colony were one. There was no thought of rebellion or independence. At trial on February 24, 1761, Otis argued against his own government that the writs were…

"…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. I will to my dying day oppose, with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery and villainy as this Writ of Assistance is."