James Otis on the right of the people to alter their government (1764)

Otis drew upon the ideas of John Locke in an important political pamphlet “The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved” (1764) which he wrote at a very early stage in the American Revolution when there was no consensus about independence from Britain. This was to come some 12 years later when Tom Paine wrote the best-selling “Common Sense” in 1776. In the opening section, Otis examines the origin of government and concludes that every person, when they came of age, had a natural right “to chuse what society he will continue to belong to”. He even seem to presage a version of Herbert Spencer’s notion of “the right to ignore the state” when he admits the right of “the Hermit” to “separate himself” from society. Another quite radical notion was the idea that any new form of government had to be the result of an “express compact” among the people, even though this would be a unique event in history, as governments had always been the result of “fraud force or accident.” Otis may not have fully grasped the significance of what he was arguing for but he helped pave the way for Paine who also had a very radical section in “Common Sense” on the origin of governments.