Otis with
fiery tongue appealed to Magna Charta.

* * * * *

Sir, regarding the Stamp Act candidly and cautiously, free from
animosities of the time, it is impossible not to see that, though
gravely unconstitutional, it was at most an infringement of civil
liberty only, not of personal liberty. There was an unjust tax of a few
pence, with the chance of amercement by a single judge without a jury;
but by no provision of this act was the personal liberty of any man
assailed. No freeman could be seized under it as a slave. Such an act,
though justly obnoxious to every lover of constitutional Liberty, cannot
be viewed with the feelings of repugnance enkindled by a statute which
assails the personal liberty of every man, and under which any freeman
may be seized as a slave. Sir, in placing the Stamp Act by the side of
the Slave Act, I do injustice to that emanation of British tyranny. Both
infringe important rights: one, of property; the other, the vital right
of all, which is to other rights as soul to body,--the right of a man
to himself. Both are condemned; but their relative condemnation must be
measured by their relative characters. As Freedom is more than property,
as Man is above the dollar that he owns, as heaven, to which we all
aspire, is higher than earth, where every accumulation of wealth must
ever remain, so are the rights assailed by an American Congress higher
than those once assailed by the British Parliament. And just in this
degree must history condemn the Slave Act more than the Stamp Act.

Sir, I might here stop. It is enough, in this place, and on this
occasion, to show the unconstitutionality of this enactment. Your duty
commences at once. All legislation hostile to the fundamental law of
the land should be repealed without delay. But the argument is not yet
exhausted. Even if this Act could claim any validity or apology under
the Constitution, which it cannot, it lacks that essential support in
the Public Conscience of the States, where it is to be enforced, which
is the life of all law, and with-out which any law must become a dead
letter.

* * * * *

With every attempt to administer the Slave Act, it constantly becomes
more revolting, particularly in its influence on the agents it enlists.
Pitch cannot be touched without defilement, and all who lend themselves
to this work seem at once and unconsciously to lose the better part of
man. The spirit of th