Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 31, 2025
Governor Bernard, however, opposed the measure, and Hutchinson declined the appointment. Otis's course was censured by the patriots and his popularity was for the while impaired. However, he took strong grounds against the Sugar Act, and soon afterward still more strenuously opposed the Stamp Act.
When John Adams tells us that "James Otis was Isaiah and Ezekiel united," we must take his word for the impression which Otis's oratory left upon his mind. But John Adams's own writings fill ten stout volumes which invite our judgment.
In fact, it was just such weather as he loved. His plan of action was this. He was to make his way quietly to Washington Otis's room, gibber at him from the foot of the bed, and stab himself three times in the throat to the sound of low music.
We even long for the closing of the scene, and think it would be far better if the now tenantless and ruined house were levelled with the ground." A nice sense of honor was perhaps the second most striking point in Otis's energetic and strongly-marked character.
But there is no such thing, sir, as a ghost, and I guess the laws of Nature are not going to be suspended for the British aristocracy." "You are certainly very natural in America," answered Lord Canterville, who did not quite understand Mr. Otis's last observation, "and if you don't mind a ghost in the house, it is all right. Only you must remember I warned you."
Franklin wrote to his English friends: "England has lost her colonies forever." Carlyle says: "I never knew a clever man who came out of entirely stupid people." James Otis's great qualities "were an inheritance, not an accident, and inheritance from the best blood of old England."
Its success appears to have been as great as its merits, and its impression was widely felt. Mr. Adams himself seems never to have lost the feeling it produced, and to have entertained constantly the fullest conviction of its important effects. "I do say," he observes, "in the most solemn manner, that Mr. Otis's Oration against Writs of Assistance breathed into this nation the breath of life."
The response of the home government was that they should be enforced, but little advantage was taken of this mandate in the Colonies, since opposition to the Writs had, thanks to the patriot Otis's denunciation of them, became almost universal; while the people had been roused to a sharp sense of their situation, in view of the tyrannous attitude of England towards the Colonies, and the next step taken by the Crown, under Prime Minister Grenville, in threatening them with the no less hated Stamp Tax.
Some of Mrs. Otis's crocks froze on the hearth that night. No such cold had been known in Vermont for years. The frost on the window-panes thickened the light of the full moon could not penetrate them; all over the house were heard sounds like those on a straining ship at sea. The old timbers cracked now and then with a report like a pistol. "It's a dreadful night," said Mrs.
If you want to read poetry, read Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden and Pope and throw all the rest into the fire; these are all that are worth reading." In this brief comment the severity of Otis's literary taste is indicated and also something of the rather abrupt and dogmatic character of his mind. His criticism, though true, can hardly be said to be judicious.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking