James Otis Quotes
It was once a fundamental maxim that every subject had the same right to his life, liberty, property, and the law that the King had to his crown; and 'tis yet, I venture to say, as much as a crown is worth, to deny the subject his law, which is his birthright.
He was considered Massachusetts’ greatest Colonial orator.
James Otis, 1725-1783, Attorney & Member of the Colonial Massachusetts legislature, Oration Against the Stamp Act Delivered Before the Governor and Council In Boston, December 20, 1765
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
See {587703} for a similar statement by a Supreme Court Justice.
In many countries, the king received all land and most property upon the death of a landowner.
This was written and adopted by Vermont a decade before the United States Constitution the ideas for which were in existence in America before the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
Mackenzie was a British officer with whom Washington had become friends in the French & Indian War and in this letter, Washington was trying to explain the seriousness of the Boston rebellion for Britain.
Hayward claimed that Wilson was the first American President who ever criticized the American Constitution. Many do not agree as Madison and Jefferson in part, along with most other Americans, found the Constitution so wanting that it was ratified only on condition of the passage of the Bill of Rights. Jackson, was distressed by the limitations on the President and many others had their objections, but Wilson, before he became a politician was a prominent academic political scientist and wrote voluminously and had an intellectual following so his criticism was not considered so “political” as others.
It was drafted by John Adams. 9 Years later the French in their Revolution used the first clause in their Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen—See Quotation 602404 For an opposite point of view see Quotation 635927.
James Otis Jr. was an American lawyer, political activist, pamphleteer, and legislator in Boston, a member of the Massachusetts provincial assembly, and an early advocate of the Patriot views against the policy of Parliament which led to the American Revolution. His well-known catchphrase "Taxation without Representation is tyranny" became the basic Patriot position.
