Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/193

Rh side of prerogative and against the right, seemed ready to pervert the law against justice. Massachusetts felt her liberty in peril, and began the war of ideas. James Otis, an irregular but brilliant and powerful man from Barnstable, and an acute lawyer, resigned his post of Advocate to the Admiralty; threw up his chance of preferment, and was determined "to sacrifice estate, ease, health, applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of my country," and in opposition to that kind of power "which cost one King of England his head, another his throne."

It was a dark day in Massachusetts when the Writs of Assistance were called for; when the talents, the fame, the riches, and the avarice of Chief-justice Hutchinson, the respectability of venerable men, the power of the Crown and its officers, were all against the right; but that brave lawyer stood up, his words "a flame of fire," to demonstrate "that all arbitrary authority was unconstitutional and against the law." His voice rung through the land like a war-psalm of the Hebrew muse. Hutchinson, rich, false, and in power, cowered before the "great incendiary" of New England. John Adams, a young lawyer from Quincy, who stood by, touched by the same inspiration, declared that afterwards he could never read the Acts of Trade without anger, nor "any portion of them without a curse." If the court was not convinced, the people were. It was a dark day when the Writs of Assistance were called for; but the birthplace of Franklin took the lightning out of that thundering cloud, and the storm broke into rain which brought forth the green glories of Liberty-tree, that soon blossomed all over in the radiance of the bow of promise set on the departing cloud. The seed from that day of bloom shall sow with blessings all the whole wide world of man. There was another dark time when the Stamp Act passed, and the day came for the use of the Stamps, Nov. 1st, 1765. The people of Boston closed their shops; they muffled and tolled the bells of the churches; they hung on Liberty-tree the effigy of Mr Huske, a New Hampshire traitor of that time, who had removed to London, got a seat in Parliament, and was said to have proposed the, Stamp Act to the British minister. Beside him they hung the image of Grenville, the ministerial author of the Act. In the afternoon, the public cut down the images; carried