away!
R. Choate.


XXVI.

SPECIMEN OF THE ELOQUENCE OF JAMES OTIS.

England may as well dam up the wafers of the Nile with bulrushes as to
fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than
where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself
among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. Arbitrary principles, like
those against which we now contend, have cost one king of England his life,
another his crown; and they may yet cost a third his most flourishing
colonies.

We are two millions--one fifth fighting men. We are bold and vigorous, and
we call no man master. To the nation, from whom we are proud to derive our
origin, we ever were, and we ever will be, ready to yield unforced
assistance; but it must not, and it never can be extorted.

Some have sneeringly asked, "Are the Americans too poor to pay a few pounds
on stamped paper?" No! America, thanks to God and herself is rich. But the
right to take ten pounds, implies the right to take a thousand; and what
must be the wealth that avarice, aided by power, cannot exhaust? True, the
spectre is now small; but the shadow he casts before him is huge enough to
darken all this fair land. Others, in sentimental style, talk of the
immense debt of gratitude which we owe to England. And what is the amount
of this debt? Why, truly, it is the same that the young lion owes to the
dam, which has brought it forth on the solitude of the mountain, or left it