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Paine, the member from
Worcester.
‘There is not
the least ground,’ said
Bernard in a message, ‘for the insinuation under color of which that sacred and well beloved name is brought into question.’
Otis, who was fiery, but not obstinate, erased the offensive words, as his sentiments were fully expressed without them; but immediately, claiming to be one
Who dared to love his country and be poor,
he vindicated himself through the press.
Invoking the authority of ‘the most wise, most honest, and most impartial
Locke,’ ‘as great an ornament as the Church of England ever had,’ because ‘of moderate and tolerant principles,’ and one who ‘wrote expressly to establish the throne which George the Third now held,’ he undertook to reply to those who could not bear that ‘liberty and property should be enjoyed by the vulgar.’
Deeply convinced of the reality of ‘the ideas of right and wrong,’ he derived his argument from original right.
‘God made all men naturally equal.
The ideas of earthly grandeur are acquired, not innate.
Kings were made for the good of the people, not the people for them.
No government has a right to make slaves of the subject.
Most governments are, in fact, arbitrary, and consequently the curse and scandal of human nature; yet none are, of right, arbitrary.
By the laws of God and nature, government must not raise taxes on the property of the people, without the consent of the people or their deputies.’
And it was reasoned, that ‘the advantage of being a Briton rather than a Frenchman, consisted in liberty.’
As a question of national law,
Otis maintained the rights of a colonial assembly to be equal to
