pleasure? if not, whence that lofty claim of allowing the governor a share in the disposition of the public money?' if the governor will but have a little patience, we shall endeavour, by a few cool sober questions, to explain this matter to him as well as we are able. Are not all money bills to take their rise in the house? can he possibly have any share in the disposition of public money if it is not raised? and can it be raised without our allowance? has the governor a right to make any amendments to a money bill? if, therefore, a clause is put into such bill, giving him a voice in the disposition of our money, must not such clause be first allowed by us to be inserted? to what purpose then were all those haughty questions? we shall answer them in a few words. We are not the sovereign disposers of power;' nor does the governor 'derive from us the right of governing this province;' it were a vain thing in us to say it, since his being our governor would alone be a sufficient proof to the contrary. The governor is pleased to say, that he studiously avoided every thing that could renew the disputes subsisting between us; and earnestly recommended the same temper of mind to us. This may be right, so far as relates to his first speech at the opening of the session; but in his amendments to our bill, it appeared to us, that he studiously proposed every thing that he thought could disgust us, in hopes of engaging us in some other dispute than that on taxing the proprietaries estate, and of making the bill with the session ineffectual and abortive. Why else, among other things, did he strike out that harmless part of the preamble, which gave, as a reason for the bill, the exhausting of our treasury by our late expensive -grants of provisions, &c. to the king's use. He did not choose the bill should mention any thing we had done, lest by that means it should reach the royal ear, and refute his repeated accusations that we had done nothing, nor would do any thing, for defence of the country;' when he knows in his conscience we have given all in our power; and it was well we had it in our power to give something, otherwise neither the British nor New England troops would have had the provisions we furnished; for could the governor possibly have done it, we have reason to believe he would have defeated our grant; he can no more bear to let us do any thing commendable, than he can bear to hear what we have done mentioned. It is true the governor recommended a good temper of mind to us; he can make plausible speeches, that will read well in other places where his conduct is not known. Indeed they appear not so much to be made for us as for others; to shew the ministry at home his great zeal for his majesty's service and concern for the welfare of this people! and to recommend himself, as it should seem, to some better post hereafter, rather than to obtain the present points that seem to be persuaded. For of what avail are the best speeches, not accompanied with suitable actions? he has recommended dispatch in very good words, and immediately hatched some dispute to occasion delay. He can recommend peace and unanimity in fine and moving language, and immediately contrive something to provoke and excite discord; the settled scheme being, not to let us do any thing that may recommend us to those with whom he would ruin us. He would appear to be in great earnest to have something done, and spurs violently with both heels, but takes care at the same time to rein in strongly with both hands, lest the public business before us should go forward. When we offered him to raise money on the excise, a method long in use, and found easy to the people, he quarrelled with us about the time of extending the act, complained it would raise too little, and yet was for shortening the term. Obsolete instructions were mustered up against it, though acts of the same kind had been since passed by the crown. Acts of parliament made for other colonies were to be enforced here, and the like. Then he called out for a tax, which the proprietaries themselves (in their answer to our representation) allowed to be the most equitable way of raising money; thinking, it is like, that we should never agree to a tax. But now when we offer an equitable tax on all'estates real and personal, he refuses that, because the proprietaries are to be taxed! The governor thinks himself injuriously treated by our request, 'that he would not make himself the hateful instrument of reducing a free people to the abject state of vassalage,' and asks, 'what grounds have you, gen. tlemen, for this heavy charge? what laws of imposition abhorrent to common justice and common reason have I attempted to force down your throats?' &c. A law to tax the people of Pennsylvania to defend the proprietary estate, and to exempt the proprietary estate from bearing any part of the tax, is, may it please the governor, a law abhorrent to common justice, common reason, and common sense. This is a law of imposition that the governor would force down our throats, by taking advantage of the distress of our country, the defence of which he will not suffer us to provide for, unless we will comply with it. Our souls rise against it. We cannot swallow it. What other instance would the governor desire us to give of his endeavouring to reduce us to a state of vassalage? he calls upon us for an instance. We give him the very law in question, as the strongest of instances. Vassals must follow their lords to the wars in defence of their lands; our lord proprietary, though a subject like ourselves, would send us out to fight for him, while he keeps himself a thousand leagues remote from danger! vassals fight at their lords expence, but our lord would have us defend his estate at our own expence! this is not merely vassalage, it is worse than any vassalage we have heard of; it is something we have no adequate name for; it is even more slavish than slavery itself. And if the governor can accomplish it, he will be deemed the hateful instrument (how much soever he is disgusted with the epithet) as long as history can preserve the memory of his administration. Does the governor think to exculpate himself, by calling upon us to prove him guilty of crimes we have never charged him with? whose liberty have I taken away? whose property have I invaded? if he can force us into this law, the liberty and property, not only of one man, but of all men in the province, will be invaded and taken away; and this to aggrandize our intended lord, encrease and secure his estate at our cost, and give him the glorious privilege that no British nobleman enjoys, of having his lands free from taxes, and defended gratis. But what is the loss of even liberty and property, compared with the loss of our good name and fame, which the governor has, by every artifice, endeavoured to deprive us of, and to ruin us in the estimation of all mankind. Accusations secretly dispersed in the neighbouring provinces and our mother country; nameless libels put into the hands of every member of parliament, lords and commons! but these were modest attacks compared with his public messages, filled with the most severe and heavy charges against us, without the least foundation; such as those in his message of the sixteenth of May last; some of which, though then fully refuted, he now ventures to renew, by exclaiming in these terms, had you any regard for your bleeding country, would you have been deaf to all the affectionate warnings and calls of his majesty? and would you have refused the proper, necessary and timely assistance to an army sent to protect these colonies?' for is it not well known that we have essayed every method, consistent with our rights and liberties, to comply with the calls of the crown, which have frequently been defeated either by proprietary instructions or the perverseness of our governor? did we not supply that army plentifully with all they asked of us, and even more than all? in testimony of which, have we not letters from the late general, and other principal officers acknowleging our care, and thanking us cordially for our service? these things are well known here; but there is no charge that the governor cannot allow himself to throw out against us, so it may have the least chance of gaining some small credit some where, though of the shortest continuance. In fine, we are sincerely grieved at the present unhappy state of our affairs; but must endeavor patiently to wait for that relief which providence may, in due time, think fit to favor us with, having, if this bill is still refused, very little farther hopes of any good from our present governor. The governor's Reply, September 24, 1755. GENTLEMEN, IN the course of my short administration among you, I have often regretted, that at a time when it becomes every one of us to be consulting and acting for the public good, you should still delight to introduce new and unnecessary disputes, and turn the attention of the people from things of the last importance to their future safety. Your very tedious message of the nineteenth of August, is a sufficient proof of your temper of mind; it is indeed of such an inflammatory nature, that did not the duties of my station and justice to the people require me to take some notice of it, I should think it beneath me as a gentleman to make any reply to a paper of that kind, filled with the grossest calumny and abuse, as well as the most glaring misrepresentations of facts; and what I shall now say in answer to it would have been said in your last sitting, had you not adjourned yourselves so soon after the delivery of it, that I had not time. You set out with claiming it as a privilege to have your bills granting supplies passed as they are tendered, without amendments, and say, 'it is far from being an ordinary method to receive or debate upon amendments offered by the governor.' This claim is not warranted by the words of the charter, nor by the usage of former assemblies, and you yourselves must know, that from the first settlement of the province to the latter end of the administration of Mr. Hamilton, my immediate predecessor, the governors have occasionally amended bills for raising money, and their right of doing so was never till then contested. Notwithstanding all you have said as to my offer of lands to the westward, I am persuaded unprejudiced men will see it in its true light, and be convinced it was made with a good intention, and under a proper authority: I mentioned my commission of property in contradistinction to the commission of government, as that under which I granted lands upon the common and ordinary occasions, which you seem to think was done under the other. But as to the offer in question, I had such directions from the proprietaries as were sufficient to justify me in making it, and would have been obligatory on them to confirm the same to the adventurers; and this I did then, and still do, think a good authority. As you do not profess to understand law, I am not surprized at your quoting an abridgment instead of the case abridged. Viner, who is no authority, may have the words you mention for aught I know, and may be of opinion that the king can purchase and hold lands in his private capacity, but in that he has the misfortune to differ from my lord Coke, and other writers of note and authority in the law. Your answers to what you call my round charge, and to what you afterwards call my haughty questions, are, by no means, conclusive; I grant that no public money can be raised, nor any elause enacted for the disposition of it, without your consent, but is not mine equally necessary? whence is it then that I should be thought more obliged to you for a voice in the disposition of public money, than you are to me, seeing the obligation (if any) is reciprocal; the money remaining in the people's pockets cannot be taken from thence, till I think a law necessary for that purpose, and shall I have less power over it after it is raised, and in the public treasury, than I had before? the common security of the people requires that they should not be taxed but by the voice of the whole legislature, and is it not equally for their security that the money when raised should not be disposed of by any less authority? Your claim therefore of a natural exclusive right to the disposition of public money, because it is the people's, is against reason, the nature of an English government, and the usage of this province, and you may as well claim the exclusive right to all the powers of government, and set up a democracy at once, because all power is derived from the people; and this indeed may be the true design. As to what you insinuate concerning the enormous growth of the proprietary estate, I shall oppose plain facts to your presumptions. By the original concessions and agreement between the late Mr. William Penn and the first settlers, nine-tenths of the land were to be granted to the adventurers, and the remaining tenth to be laid out to the proprietary; but instead of this, the late proprietary, out of the lands purchased of the Indians in his time, contented himself with taking up but a very small part of what he might have done under that agreement; and out of the three Indian purchases made by his sons since his death, in the two first, consisting of four million acres of land, they did not survey upwards of twenty-five thousand acres, and those neither of the richest nor best situated; and in the last, which is by far the largest of all, no surveys have been made for their use, but they gave early directions, that the settlers should, as they applied, take their choice of the best lands, and accordingly great numbers of people are seated on these lands, to their entire satisfaction. As to their manors and appropriated tracts, it is well known that they are mostly settled by persons without leave or title, and that these pay their share of all taxes; in short, gentlemen, if instead of setting the proprietaries forth as encreasing their estates, and using their tenants like vassals, you had represented them as forbearing with them, and using no compulsory methods for the obtainment even of their just debts, and that for these and many other instances of their kind usage of them, the proprietaries are entitled to the character of good, nay of the best landlords, you had done them no more than justice, and said only what is notorious to all that know their treatment of the people in this province. I can by no means allow you to argue justly in saying that the proprietaries ought to submit their estate to be taxed by assessors chosen by the people, because they are sworn or solemnly affirmed to do equal justice. When you are taxed by these assessors, it is by persons who may be considered as your equals, and who are interested to do you justice, as you in |