James Otis, the Pre-RevolutionistRidpath, John Clark
History
James Otis, the Pre-Revolutionist
Ridpath, John Clark
Otis, James, 1725-1783
"We have for a long time known your enmity to this Province. We
have had full proof of your cruelty to a loyal people. No age
has, perhaps, furnished a more glaring instance of obstinate
perseverance in the path of malice. * * * Could you have reaped
any advantage from injuring this people, there would have been
some excuse for the manifold abuses with which you have loaded
them. But when a diabolical thirst for mischief is the alone
motive of your conduct, you must not wonder if you are treated
with open dislike; for it is impossible, how much soever we
endeavor it, to feel any esteem for a man like you. * * *
Nothing has ever been more intolerable than your insolence upon a
late occasion when you had, by your jesuitical insinuations,
induced a worthy minister of state to form a most unfavorable
opinion of the Province in general, and some of the most
respectable inhabitants in particular. You had the effrontery to
produce a letter from his Lordship as a proof of your success in
calumniating us. * * * We never can treat good and patriotic
rulers with too great reverence. But it is certain that men
totally abandoned to wickedness can never merit our regard, be
their stations ever so high.
'If such men are by God appointed, The Devil may be the Lord's
anointed.' A TRUE PATRIOT.
Hutchinson tried to induce the grand jury to indict Warren for
libel on account of this intemperate attack. The jury, however,
returned "ignoramus," and the Governor had to bear the affront,
which was but one of a series directed against him during his
remaining days in America.
On the other hand, direct attacks were also made against Otis,
and some were marked by scurrility and coarseness of language,
which could not fail to arouse a man of his temper and fine sense
of honor. How he did regard them appears from the following
extract from a letter to his sister, Mrs. Warren:
"Tell my dear brother Warren to give himself no concern about the
scurrilous piece in Tom Fleet's paper. It has served me as much
as the song did last year. The tories are all ashamed of this,
as they were of that; the author is not yet certainly known,
though I think I am within a week of detecting him for certain.
If I should, I shall try to cure him once for all, by stringing
him up, not bodily, but in such a way as shall gibbet his memory
in terrorem. It lies between Bernard, Waterhouse, and Jonathan
Sewall. The first, they say, has not wit enough to write
anything; the second swears off; and the third must plead guilty
or not guilty as soon as I see him. Till matters are settled in
England, I dare not leave this town, as men's minds are in such a
situation, that every nerve is requisite to keep them from
running to some irregularity and imprudence; and some are yet
wishing for an opportunity to hurt the country."
OTIS'S AFFECTION FOR ENGLAND IN SPITE OF HIS OPPOSITION TO THE
ARBITRARY MEASURES OF HER MINISTRY. By Charles K. Edmunds, Ph. D.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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