recalled. He was a man of ready wit, and when in 1778 some kegs of powder fitted with explosives were set afloat in the Delaware river to be borne by the tide against British war-vessels he was asked, as judge of admiralty, under what branch of the laws of navigation they would be an chored; and answered " Flotsam until they strike the ship, and jetsam immediately afterwards." James Otis was another colonial lawyer whose legal fame is merged to posterity in his pa triotic renown. Har vard college had him for a son, and Jeremy Gridley, a Massa chusetts lawyer of the Erskine School, had him for a pupil. When only twentythree years old Otis opened a law office in Boston, and at once attained dis tinction. There were then in vogue gen eral search-warrants on writs of assis tance, as the cabinet of George III eu phemistically called JAMES the process which allowed the officers of the king to break open any citizen's store or dwelling in order to search for contraband merchandise. A client damaged by such summary proceeding em ployed Otis to attack it before the general court. He was, however, judge advocate under the Crown party, and yet he launched his attack against the process — opposed by his late law preceptor who was Crown at torney-general. Of that speech John Adams has said, " At its utterance American in-
dependence was then and there born. Otis was a flame of fire. With promptitude of classical allusion, depth of research, rapid summaries of historical events, prophetic glances into futurity and torrents of impetuous eloquence he carried away all before him. Every man of the crowded court room ap peared to go away, as I confess I did, ready to take up arms against writs of as sistance." Could there be a finer trib ute to the power of advocacy? All of his legal career, stamped with only incipient patriotism, occurred many years before the battle of Lexing ton. In the summer of 1769 a British cus toms commissioner named Robinson, angered at some legal stricture from Otis, preceded the bludgeon business of Brooks with Sum ner by inflicting on the head of Otis a blow which injured his brain and for a time dethroned rea son. A jury gave him $10,000 dam OTIS ages for which in one of his lucid intervals when impressed with the sight of his assailant on his knees begging against pecuniary ruin he gave him a release without any payment. For many years Otis lived on with his great intellect in ruins, a comparatively useless man, and a deep grief to his relatives; although his sister — famous Mary Warren — cared for him devotedly, and under the influence of the quality borne in her Christian name his occasionally turbulent spiritlent willing
