George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[420] in Otis of legal learning with speculative opinion,

chap. XVIII.} 1761.

of principles of natural justice the most abstract and the most radical, with a deeply-fixed respect for the rights of property and obedience to the law, will become familiar with a cast of mind still common in New England.

The subserviency of Hutchinson increased the public discontent. Men lost confidence in the integrity of their highest judicial tribunal. Innovations under pretence of law were confirmed by judgments incompatible with English liberties. The Admiralty Court, hateful because instituted by a British parliament to punish infringements of the Acts of Trade in America without the intervention of a jury, had in distributing the proceeds of forfeitures, violated the very statutes which it was appointed to enforce. Otis endeavored to compel a restitution of the third of forfeitures, which by the revenue laws belonged to the king for the use of the province, but had been misappropriated for the benefit of officers and informers.¹ ‘The injury done the province’ was admitted by the chief justice, who yet had no jurisdiction to redress it. The Court of Admiralty, in which the wrong originated, had always been deemed grievous, because unconstitutional; its authority seemed now established by judges devoted to the prerogative.

Unable to arrest the progress of illiberal doctrines in the courts, the people of Boston, in May, 1761, with unbounded and very general enthusiasm, elected Otis one of their representatives to the Assembly. ‘Out of this,’ said Ruggles to the royalist Chandler of Worcester, ‘a faction will arise that will shake ’