Professor Hosmer thus compares Otis and Adams:
"Otis' power was so magnetic that a Boston town meeting, upon his
mere entering, would break out into shouts and clapping, and if
he spoke he produced effects which may be compared with the sway
exercised by Chatham, whom as an orator he much resembled. Long
after disease had made him utterly untrustworthy, his spell
remained. He brought the American cause to the brink of ruin,
because the people would follow him, though he was shattered.
"Of this gift Samuel Adams possessed little. He was always in
speech, straightforward and sensible, and upon occasion could be
impressive, but his endowment was not that of the mouth of gold.
"While Otis was fitful, vacillating and morbid, Samuel Adams was
persistent, undeviating, and sanity itself. While Samuel Adams
never abated by a hair his opposition to the British policy,
James Otis, who at the outset had given the watch-word to the
patriots, later, after Parliament had passed the Stamp Act, said:
"'It is the duty of all humbly and silently to acquiesce in all
the decisions of the supreme legislature. Nine hundred and
ninety-nine in a thousand will never entertain the thought but of
submission to our sovereign, and to the authority of Parliament
in all possible contingencies.'"