At the same time that he was
casting doubt upon the significance of the colonial charters, Otis was
evidently also given to affirm that the status quo indicated by the passage of
the Sugar Act represented a distribution of burdens somewhat at odds with the
dictates of justice, equity, and common sense. A representation in Parliament
from the several Colonies,” he thereby asserted,
Since they are become so large
and numerous, as to be called on not to maintain provincial government, civil
and military among themselves, for this they have chearfully done, but to
contribute towards the support of a national standing army, by reason of the
heavy national debt, when they themselves owe a large one, contracted in the
common cause, can’t be tho’t an unreasonable thing, nor if asked, could it be
called an immodest request.
As it then indeed stood, the
colonies of British America were expected to welcome and assist whatever
British forces were stationed in their midst and pay whatever taxes were laid
upon them by Parliament while also funding their own local defenses and seeing
to the debts they had themselves accrued during the recent war with France. This
not only meant that Americans would be forced to pay for two military
establishments and support two sets of financial obligations, but it placed them
in the position of funding a garrison in America over whose actions they
exercised no control whatsoever. The Latin phrase that Otis next cited – Qui
sentis commodum sentire debet et onus,
meaning, “he who enjoys the benefit must bear the burden” – served to embody
his objection to this arrangement. Applied in the reverse – i.e. “he who bears
a burden must receive some benefit” – he regarded it as a customary guarantee
that political authority would never exact costs without providing something of
value in return. “That a man should bear a burden for other people,” he thus
explained, “as well as himself, without a return, never long found a place in
any law-book or decrees, but those of the most despotic princes.” Lest the
British sovereign become just that, it followed that his American subjects
ought to have been permitted to take their place in the halls of Westminster.
It
perhaps bears repeating that this was not necessarily a practical demand. For
all of the reasons cited previously, sending American MPs to sit in Parliament
was an exceedingly inefficient proposition by which both the British
legislative process and the interests of the Crown’s subjects in America would likely
have suffered. Indeed, it was surely for this reason that contemporaries of
Otis like John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson – in their Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1767-1768) and A Summary View of the Rights of British
America (1774), respectively – restricted themselves to merely asserting
the illegitimacy of Parliament’s claim to freely tax the people of America and
calling for a repeal of the relevant legislation. What they shared with Otis,
however – or indeed the manner in which they followed Otis – was in their
common characterization of the issue at hand as being principally moral in
nature. Dickinson and Jefferson alike were both firm and explicit in their
conviction that Parliament’s claim to the right of taxation in America was
fundamentally and inherently invalid. There were, of course, no laws on the
books which clearly and unambiguously agreed with this conviction, nor much in
the way of evidence to support any such restrictions upon the authority of
Parliament. Nevertheless, they presented the issue as being a matter of right
and wrong, natural and unnatural. The rights possessed by every subject of the
British Crown, regardless of their place of birth or residence, demanded equal
consideration under the British Constitution. No authority on earth could
change that fact, and would deny it at their peril.
To be fair, Otis did endeavor to
take things somewhat further, deploying in Asserted
and Proved a host of legal citations and pragmatic assertions as to why it
was improper, impolitic, and impractical for the present government in Britain
to continue along the path that the Sugar Act portended. That being said, his
core conviction – the thing that subsequent commentators most often echoed –
was moral, spiritual, and essential. It wasn’t that Parliament couldn’t tax the
colonies directly, for clearly they could. And it wasn’t that such taxation
would drive the colonists to rebellion, though obviously that is what happened.
Rather, it was the moral character of the British state that stood to suffer in
the event that the Sugar Act was maintained. Speaking to this conviction, Otis
declared in Asserted and Proved that,
When the parliament shall think
fit to allow the colonists a representation in the house of commons, the equity
of their taxing the colonies, will be as clear as their power is at present of
doing it without, if they please.
While thus tacitly admitting that
Parliament could, if its members were so inclined, tax whomever it wished in
America to the extent it so desired, Otis simultaneously affirmed the primacy
of a higher consideration. Certainly it was possible for Westminster to extract
whatever wealth it set its sight upon from the American people. For that
matter, it may even have been preferable to do so, though Otis ably claimed
otherwise. But no matter how capable Parliament may have been of achieving this
end, and no matter what benefits may have accrued in the meantime, nothing
could have made it right.
Asserted and Proved may thus be said to
share the unwavering moral certitude of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in support of nearly the opposite central thesis.
Paine wanted to save America from British rapacity by directing it down the
path of independence. Otis almost certainly labored in hope of this same
result, but seemed to believe that the best way to achieve it was to save the
British Empire as a whole. Endeavoring to convince his audience that seating
American MPs in Westminster was a sound proposal was thus far from naïve or
delusional. Impractical or not, costly or not, inefficient or not, it was the
only means he could conceive by which the British state might preserve its
status as the steadfast guardian of the rights and liberties of its citizens.
Granted, the people of British America stood to benefit measurably and directly
from having permanent advocates stationed in the halls of Parliament. The
presence of American MPs, for example, would surely have made legislation like
the Sugar Act harder to pass, and likewise lessened the ability of British
lawmakers to garrison soldiers among communities whose objections never reached
their ears. But such advantages did not strike at the true purpose of such a
reform. Again, the intention was fundamentally moral. Even if the elected
representatives of the American people failed to stop their colleagues in
Westminster from levying taxes upon the commerce of Boston or the agriculture
of Virginia, or from stationing military personnel in every city and town
across the breadth of the Thirteen Colonies, they, their constituents, and
their fellow subjects in every corner of the Empire could at least take comfort
in the knowledge that the proper forms had been observed, the ancient
precedents followed, and the rights of the people respected and observed.
It is perhaps worth noting that in spite of the
ardent loyalty to the British state espoused by James Otis Jr. in the text of Asserted
and Proved, he ultimately sided with the Patriot cause upon the outbreak of
hostilities between Great Britain and the Continental Congress. His earlier
dealings with Massachusetts Governors Francis Bernard and Thomas Hutchinson may
well have contributed to this outcome, if not also his close personal and
professional relationship with the incendiary Samuel Adams. In any case, he
proved himself an impassioned critic of subsequent attempts by Parliament to
bring British America to heel. He opposed the Stamp Act, for example, upon its
passage in 1765 and penned a follow-up to Asserted
and Proved entitled Considerations on Behalf of the Colonists. He was thereafter chosen to attend the resulting Stamp Act
Congress, convened in New York City for the purpose of determining a collective
response on the part of the participating American colonies. Though reportedly
passed up as chairman of that body in consequence of his reputation as a
firebrand, he was nonetheless described by colleague John Adams as having been
the very soul of the gathering. As fate would have it, this may as well have
been the man’s epitaph. Having suffered from intermittent bouts of mental
illness since at least the 1740s, Otis became increasingly unstable and
experienced shorter and shorter periods of lucidity as the 1760s progressed.
His participation in the subsequent revolution – to whose language and logic he
had so powerfully contributed – was thus severely limited. As if this were not
tragic enough, he lived only until May of 1783, four months before the signing
of the treaty that finally and firmly secured the independence of the United
States of America. Struck by lightning, of all things, while standing in the
doorway of a friend’s home, he was fifty-eight years old at the time of his
death.
Such a maudlin recounting of a subject’s
last days admittedly represents a diversion from how these discussions usually
come to a close. While the life of James Otis Jr. may fairly be considered too
brilliant and too tragic to forego relating in full, the circumstances of his
career and his contributions to the Patriot cause might also be said to weigh
upon the significance of his work. He did not live very long and he was not
very prolific. In consequence, Asserted
and Proved may have been one of the most important things Otis ever did
with his life. How intriguing it is, then, that it should also prove to be one
of the most important documents in the history of the Revolution.
Or perhaps that’s going a bit too far. Otis
was certainly a revered figure in his day, but his ultimate contribution to the
cause of American liberty was – as noted above – necessarily limited. Just so,
while it would not be hard at all to believe that Asserted and Proved exerted a significant influence upon the
direction and tenor of the emerging Patriot dialogue surrounding the rights and
liberties of Britain’s American subjects, it would be likewise difficult to say
for certain how and when this might have been the case. Otis was undoubtedly
among the first public commenters writing within the context of the late 18th
century Anglo-American crisis to characterize the rights possessed by British
Americans – and lately abrogated by Parliament – as being of a natural
derivation. This was not an idea that he originated, to be sure – Hobbes and
Locke had first discussed the notion up to a century prior – but it was one
that had yet to be applied to the increasingly fraught relationship between
Great Britain and its American dependencies. It is also worth noting that John
and Samuel Adams both reported being
particularly stuck by the power of Otis’ intellect and the strength of his
convictions when they heard him speak in the 1760s, and that the events of the
Stamp Act Congress doubtless left many more statesmen from far outside the
environs of colonial Massachusetts similarly affected. In consequence, while it
may once again be overstating matters somewhat to declare that James Otis
singlehandedly gave rise to the natural rights discussion within the context of
the American Revolution, it nevertheless bears recognition that he was one of
the first public voices to so articulate the mounting crisis of the 1760s and
that he very often left a distinct and lasting impression of those who
encountered his voice.
It may be said with far less ambiguity,
however, that Asserted and Proved is
one of the most important documents in the historiography
of the Revolution. This is to say – for those mercifully unfamiliar with the
conventions of 21st century academia – that while it might not have
been the most demonstrably influential documents in its day, it says a great
deal to those whose have since attempted to understand the nature of the
Revolution about how and why that event came to pass.
Consider, for example, the context in which
Asserted and Proved was written.
Approved by Parliament in 1765, the Stamp Act is arguably the single piece of
British legislation that was most responsible for catalyzing the nascent
Patriot movement, inflaming the passions of statesmen from New Hampshire to
South Carolina, and for the first time prompting independent, collective American
political action. But Otis first wrote in response to the earlier Sugar Act. A
comparative warning shot to the Crown’s subjects in America intended to alert
them that change was afoot in the relationship between Parliament and the
colonies, this claimed attempt at trade regulation angered principally those it
affected and roused nothing like the degree of public discontent that 1765
would soon witness. That Otis nevertheless responded to the Sugar Act
passionately and rigorously is thus a testament to the keenness of his
intellect and the depth of his convictions, as well as a clear indication that
discontent had been stirring in America for some time before taxes on
newspapers, contracts, and playing cards brought vast swathes of the population
to their feet. At a time when victory in war had lately served to bolster the
affection these same people felt for the empire of which they were a part, this
is no minor point of fact. Indeed, when one considers the nature of Otis’ claim
in Asserted and Proved – that what
mattered most under the British Constitution was not power but right – within
the context of the high passion for British imperialism aroused by the
successful conclusion of the Seven Years War, it certainly bears wondering
whether Otis was the only person in American inclined to question the authority
of Parliament or simply the only one to do so publically.
More fascinating
yet, given how influential many of the ideas he presented would eventually
prove among his Patriot successors, is that Otis made his case against
unlimited British authority in America in the context of loyalty to the
institutions of the British state. Not only does this cast Asserted and Proved in a similar light to modern political
journalism – i.e. criticism as a means of holding those in power to account –
but it complicates popular narratives of the Revolution as being a wholesale
rejection of all things British. As noted above, Otis seemed to believe that
the best way to save the liberties of his fellow Americans and the integrity of
their political institutions was to save Great Britain itself from becoming a
state that tolerated the violation of the same. Far from washing his hands of
Parliament and the British Constitution, he was thus intent on protecting these
very institutions – which he unreservedly hallowed – from corruption,
thoughtlessness, and the erosion of established political norms. Indeed, it
would in some ways seem fairer to place Asserted
and Proved next to something like Cato’s
Letters than the aforementioned Common
Sense. Like Trenchard and Gordon, Otis was prompted by recent events – the
1720 collapse of South Sea Company stock for the former, the 1764 passage of
the Sugar Act for the latter – to diagnose the ills then plaguing the
contemporary British state. That the authors of Cato’s Letters wrote from within the context of early Georgian
Britain while the sole scribe of Asserted
and Proved was a late 18th century Massachusetts lawyer affected
only the circumstances of their work and not its purpose. Otis was united with
his predecessors Trenchard and Gordon in seeking to expose the failings of a
particular government as a means of preserving the soul of an empire.
If nothing else,
the ease with which this kind of similarity may be drawn should suggest – as
many of the discussions undertaken in these pages have attempted – that the
America Revolution was indeed a process rather than a moment. Contrary to the
most popular narratives – which so often seem to begin with the Boston Tea
Party and end with the Battle of Yorktown – the crisis that gave birth to the
United States of America defies simple description. It was the child of many
mothers – religious, political, philosophical, economic – began when it began –
1775? 1765? 1764? 1688? – ended when it ended – 1783? 1787? 1803? 1865? – and
was at no point as cut and dried as two centuries of retellings would have it
appear. Asserted and Proved is
arguably symbolic of this definitional slipperiness because the image it
conjures seems to be so plainly at odds with what the Revolution is best known
for. Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and Paine’s Common Sense describe a people since exhausted by the strain of
attempting to negotiate an acceptable solution to an ongoing political crisis.
That was 1776. The critique rendered by James Otis of the recently-passed Sugar
Act meanwhile evinces the loyalty and affection many Americans then sincerely felt
for Great Britain and its institutions and the patience they were willing to
exercise in seeing preserved the bond between that country and their own. That
was 1764. The failure of one made the other possible. Such was the nature of
the process. Such was the nature of the American Revolution.
Anyhow, that’ll do
me. Take a look for yourself sometime.
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