considerable places are not represented, they ought to be." Writing in his 1763 publication The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, Otis declared that, Every British subject born on the continent of America, or in any other of the British dominions, is by the law of God and nature, by the common law, and by act of parliament, (exclusive of all charters from the Crown) entitled to all the natural, essential, inherent and inseparable rights of our fellow subjects in Great Britain. Among those rights ... which it is humbly conceived no man or body of men, not excepting the parliament, justly, equitably and consistently with their own rights and the constitution, can take away ... [are that the] supreme and subordinate powers of the legislation should be free and sacred in the hands where the community have once rightfully placed them ... [that the] supreme national legislative cannot be altered justly 'till the commonwealth is dissolved, nor a subordinate legislative taken away without forfeiture or other good cause. Nor then can the subjects in the subordinate government be reduced to a state of slavery, and subject to the despotic rule of others ... Even when the subordinate right of legislature is forfeited, and so declared, this cannot affect the natural persons either of those who were invested with it, or the inhabitants, so far as to deprive them of the rights of subjects and of men — The colonists will have an equitable right notwithstanding any such forfeiture of charter, to be represented in Parliament, or to have some new subordinate legislature among themselves. It would be best if they had both ... [Furthermore, the right of every British subject is that the] supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property, without his consent in person, or by representation. Otis simultaneously refuted, in The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, a contemporary argument that attempted to rationalise virtual representation on the basis of the colonial agents' alleged influence on British policy. "As to the colonists being represented by the provincial agents," he wrote, I know of no power ever given them but to appear before his Majesty, and his ministry. Sometimes they have been directed to petition the parliament: But they none of them have, and I hope never will have, a power given them, by the colonists, to act as