[5] “‘I am determined,’ such were his words, ‘to sacrifice estate ... life in opposition to a kind of power, the exercise of which cost one king of England his head and another his throne.’ ... Tracing the lineage of freedom to its origin, he opposed the claims of the British officers by the authority of ‘reason,’ and that they were at war with the ‘Constitution’ he proved by appeals to the Charter of Massachusetts, and its English liberties.... ‘An Act of Parliament against the Constitution is void,’ he said.... ‘The crowded audience seemed ready to take up arms.’”—_Idem._, vol. iv., ch. 18, pp. 415-6. [6] “The true interests of Great Britain and her plantations are mutual. Otis in 1763.”—_Idem._, vol. v., ch. 5, p. 90. [7] See the Representations of the General Assembly at New York to the King, concerning the administration of justice in that province, 1762, mentioned in _Idem._, vol. v., ch. 5, p. 84. “By the laws of nature and of nations, the voice of universal reason and of God, by the statute law and the common law, this memorial claimed for the colonists the absolute rights of Englishmen, ... such were the views of Otis sent by Massachusetts” in 1764 “to its agent in London.”—_Idem._, vol. v., ch. 10, pp. 198-9. [8] “Less than forty were willing to receive the petition of Virginia. A third from South Carolina, a fourth from Connecticut, ... a fifth from Massachusetts, ... shared the same refusal. That from New York, no one could be prevailed upon to offer.... The House of Commons would neither receive petitions nor hear council.”—_Idem._, vol. v., ch. 11, p. 246. This was in Feb., 1765. [9] In 1763 Brown, the Governor of South Carolina, “assumed the power of rejecting members whom the House declared duly elected and returned.”—_Idem._, vol. v., ch. 8, p. 150. In May, 1765, “The Lieutenant-Governor” of Virginia “dissolved the Assembly.”—_Idem._, ch. 13, p. 277. “Fearing a general expression of the sentiments of the people, through their representatives ... Tyron issued a proclamation in October proroguing the Assembly which was to meet on the thirtieth of November, until the following March. This act incurred the indignation of the people.”—_Lossing’s Field Book of the Revolution_, vol. ii., p. 568. Later, “Townshend’s revenue, so far as it provided an independent support for the crown officers, did away with the necessity of colonial legislatures.... Governors would have little inducement to call assemblies, and an angry minister might dissolve them without inconvenience to his administration.”—_Bancroft’s U. S._, vol. vi., ch. 29, p. 85. “An act of Parliament” in 1767 “suspended the functions of its (N. Y.) legislature till they should render obedience to the Imperial Legislature.”—_Idem._, p. 84. “Bernard ... prorogued them, and then dissolved the Assembly. Massachusetts was left without a legislature.”—_Idem._, vol. vi., ch. 34, p. 165.