Now, one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of privacy and personal freedom within one's home.
James Otis underscores the concept that the home is a sanctuary for individual liberty, where people should feel safe and free from intrusion. This idea reflects the broader principle of personal rights and freedoms that are essential to a democratic society, suggesting that one's home should be a place of personal autonomy and protection against external forces.
In practice
In a discussion about personal rights during a legal seminar.
I am forced to get my living by the labour of my hand; and the sweat of my brow... for bitter bread, earned under the frowns of some who have no natural or divine right to be above me, and entirely owe their grandeur and honor to grinding the faces of the poor.
There can be no prescription old enough to supersede the Law of Nature and the grant of God Almighty, who has given to all men a natural right to be free, and they have it ordinarily in their power to make themselves so, if they please.
I will to my dying day oppose with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other, as this writ of assistance is.
If we are not represented, we are slaves.
It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own.
An act against the Constitution is void; an act against natural equity is void.
How much harm does a company have to do before we question its right to exist?
Surely you're not saying that God had to choose between long life and intelligence for human beings! It's there in your own Bible, Carlotta. Two trees - knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying.
I am a steadfast follower of the doctrine of non-violence which was first preached by Lord Buddha, whose divine wisdom is absolute.
Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all men are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all men and all countries β not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of mankind as civilized.
One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which the did happen.
ORPHAN, n. A living person whom death has deprived of the power of filial ingratitude . . .
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