...in 1768, James Otis, Jr. gave a characteristically fiery
speech to his fellow legislators in Boston. He referred to the
British House of Commons as a gathering of "button-makers, horse
jockey gamesters, pensioners, pimps, and whore-masters." The
colony's royal governor denounced Otis's tirade as the most
"insolent. . . treasonable declamation that perhaps was ever
delivered." Otis's speech in June 1768 was one of many that
attacked Parliament for its efforts to squeeze more revenue from
the American colonies. His insistence that "a man's house is his
castle" and later that there be "no taxation without
representation" remain etched in our collective memory long
after his name, and his role in the events leading up to the
Revolution, have been forgotten. John Adams and Thomas
Hutchinson, the Crown-appointed governor of Massachusetts
between 1771 and 1774, agreed on at least one point: the story
of the American Revolution began with James Otis, Jr. Fifty
years after Otis delivered a blistering attack on the