Otis

Otis, JAMES, American statesman, was born at West Barnstable, Massachusetts, 5th February 1725, graduated at Harvard in 1743, practised law, and became a leader of the Boston bar. He was advocate-general in 1760, when the revenue officers demanded his assistance in obtaining from the superior court general search-warrants allowing them to enter any man's house in quest of smuggled goods. Otis, however, refused, resigned his position, and appeared for the people; and his speech, which took five hours in delivery, produced a great impression—John Adams afterwards declared that 'the child Independence was then and there born.' When the writs were granted, by the direction of the home authorities, in 1761, Otis was elected to the Massachusetts assembly; and he afterwards was prominent in firm resistance to the revenue acts. In 1769 he was savagely beaten by some revenue officers and others, and as a result of a sword-cut on the head he lost his reason. On 23d May 1783 he was killed by lightning. The publication on which his fame chiefly rests is The Rights of the Colonies Asserted and Proved (1764), a powerful and fearless defence of their right to control their own public expenditure. See the Life by W. Tudor (Boston, 1823).