Page:George Washington (IA cu31924032749149).pdf/193

Rh excuse should they ignore the warning, so explicit and so eloquent of revolutionary purpose. It was James Otis who uttered it. He had but the other day carried the royal commission in his pocket as Advocate-General in his Majesty's Court of Admiralty; but he would not have scrupled, even as his Majesty's servant, he said, to oppose the exercise of a power which had already cost one King his head and another his throne. To oppose in such a case was to defend the very constitution under which the King wore his crown. That constitution secured to Englishmen everywhere the rights of freemen; the colonists had, besides, the plain guarantees of their own charters; if constitution and charter failed, or were gainsaid, the principles of natural reason sufficed for defence against measures so arrogant and so futile. No lawyer could justify these extraordinary writs; no King with an army at his back could ever force them to execution.

Protest not only, but defiance, rang very clear in these fearless words; and ministers must avow themselves very ignorant should they pretend they did not know how Mr. Otis had kindled fire from one end of the colonies to the other. But Grenville was resolute to take all risks and push his policy. He did not flinch from the enforcement of the measures of 1764, and in the session of 1765 calmly fulfilled his promise of further taxation. He proposed that the colonists should be required to use revenue stamps upon all their commercial paper, legal documents, pamphlets, and newspapers; and that, at once as a general measure of convenience and a salutary exhibition of authority, his Majesty's troops stationed in the plantations should be billeted on the people. Parliament readily acquiesced. It was thus Gren-