It is more remarkable that its author
should have lived to see fulfilled to the letter what could have seemed
to others, at the time, but the extravagance of youthful fancy. His
earliest political feelings were thus strongly American, and from this
ardent attachment to his native soil he never departed.
While still living at Quincy, and at the age of twenty-four, Mr. Adams
was present, in this town, on the argument before the supreme court
respecting Writs of Assistance, and heard the celebrated and patriotic
speech of James Otis. Unquestionably, that was a masterly performance.
No flighty declamation about liberty, no superficial discussion
of popular topics, it was a learned, penetrating, convincing,
constitutional argument, expressed in a strain of high and resolute
patriotism. He grasped the question then pending between England and her
colonies with the strength of a lion; and if he sometimes sported, it
was only because the lion himself is sometimes playful. Its success
appears to have been as great as its merits, and its impression was
widely felt. Mr. Adams himself seems never to have lost the feeling it
produced, and to have entertained constantly the fullest conviction
of its important effects. "I do say," he observes, "in the most solemn
manner, that Mr.
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