Note 163 — Chapter I · (continued 2)

What we know of this speech is derived mainly from the notes of it taken by John Adams (Works, ii. 521-525), and from the reminiscent account of it which Adams gave to William Tudor in 1818, with his description of the scene in court during its delivery. Minot, in his Hist. of Massachusetts, 1748-1765 (vol. ii. 91-99), worked up these notes, and they form the basis of the narrative in Tudor's Life of Otis (p. 62). The legal aspects have been specially examined by Horace Gray in an appendix to the Reports of Cases in the Superior Court 1761-1772, by Josiah Quincy, Jr., printed from his original manuscripts, and edited by Samuel M. Quincy (Boston, 1865). Cf. John Adams's Works, x. pp. 182, 233, 244, 274, 314, 317, 338, 342, 362. Cf. also Ibid., vol. i. p. 58; ii. 124, 521; and the Adams-Warren Correspondence in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., xliv. 340, 355. Cf. also Hutchinson's Mass. Bay, vol. iii.; Essex Institute Hist. Coll., Aug., 1860; Bancroft's United States, ii. 546, 553; Thornton's Pulpit of the Rev., 112; Barry's Massachusetts, ii. 264; Everett's Orations, i. 388; Scott's Constitutional Liberty, 237; Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 5; Palfrey's Compend. Hist. N. E., iv. 306; Wells's Sam. Adams, i. 43. There is a copy of one of these writs in the cabinet of the Mass. Hist. Society. W. S. Johnson wrote to Governor Trumbull that the process was in vogue in England (Trumbull Papers; Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., xlix. pp. 292, 374), as it is to-day. The most conspicuous instance of an attempt to search under these writs was when the officers tried to enter the house of Daniel Malcom in Oct., 1766, and were forcibly resisted. The papers connected with this, as transmitted to London, and telling the story on both sides, are among the Lee Papers in Harvard College library (vol. i. nos. 14-25).