Bernard demanded the rescinding of the letters; and Otis replied in a speech which the Governor described as "the most violent, abusive, and treasonable declaration that perhaps ever was delivered." It is a very significant indication of the state of popular feeling in Massachusetts at the time that, while only seventeen members of the House were ready to say "Yes" to the Governor's demand, nintey-two were resolved to say "No." In the summer of 1769 a violent and disgraceful affray took place between Otis and Robinson, the Commissioner of Customs, in a coffee-house, in which Otis received a severe blow on the head. From that moment his public career was practically at an end. He became the victim of insanity. From 1771 to 1783 he lived aloof from the excitement of public affairs. His death was singularly tragic and fearfully sudden. As he stood at the door of his home in Andover, during a storm, a flash of lightning struck him lifeless to the ground; so that he may almost be said to have been carried to his rest in a chariot of fire. [H] Edmund Burke had previously warned the British Parliament against the futile attempt to tax the American colonies, and had said, "You will never get a shilling from them." [I] Tudor and Bowen hold that these letters, which are found in the Massachusetts State Paper Collection, are from the pen of Otis. Bancroft gives strong reasons for believing Samuel Adams to be their author. As to the place of Otis in the early colonial history of America it is somewhat difficult to state it. His influence as the leader and exponent of popular opinion was undoubtedly very great so long as it lasted, and in the main it was beneficial. If, like many another great moral and political force, he accomplished something entirely different from what he intended, both what he intended and what he actually accomplished were equally a credit to him. Some of his contemporaries thought that his courage, his eloquence, his pure and undiluted patriotism, had a serious drawback in the irrepressible fire and vehemence of his nature; but passion enters largely into the composition of all noble natures, and is, in no inconsiderable degree, the secret of their success. Otis was certainly wanting in some of the elements of greatness displayed by the most distinguished of his contemporaries and compatriots. His style of statemanship was not so far-seeing, comprehensive, and solid as that of a Samuel Adams, a Thomas Jefferson, a John Dickenson, or a Benjamin Franklin, and it certainly lacked the Machiavellian coolness and argumentativeness of a Hutchinson. But what Otis accomplished was impossible to any of them. His work was quite unique in its way, and his public life and action have produced results as valuable and lasting as the public labors of any of the noble men who devoted without stint their best thought and energies to laying down, deep, strong, and enduring, the foundation-stones of the American Republic.