great as ever; but when the delegates of power are continually abusing and calumniating the people, it is no wonder if they lose all confidence' in such delegates.

The governor can think himself at liberty to tell us, that we stir up his majesty's subjects against his majesty's government, forgetting all duty to our sovereign;' and yet if we only tell him, that the difficulties he meets with, are not owing to those causes, which indeed have no existence, but to his own want of skill and abilities for his station, he takes it extremely amiss, and says, we forget all decency to those in authority.' We are apt to think there is likewise some decency due to the assembly, as a part of the government, and though we have not, like the governor, had a courtly education, but are plain men, and must be very imperfect in our politeness, yet we think we have no chance of improving by his example. Skill and abilities to govern, we apprehend fall to the share of few; they may possibly be acquired by study and practice, but are not infused into a man with his commission; he may without them be a wise and able man in other affairs, and a very good and honest man in general. But those 'who stir up his majesty's subjects against his government, and forget all duty to their sovereign,' as the governor says we do, must be traitors and rebels, a character that includes the highest folly with the greatest wickedness. The world will judge which of these charges is most decent, as well as most true, and we shall leave it to their judgment.

The governor is pleased to repeat the charge of our “ taking upon us great and mighty powers," and to say, since you call upon me to particularize them, I shall gratify you. We apprehend it is rather to gratify himself; for lest these particulars should seem to be brought in improperly, the governor says, we call upon him for them. We cannot find any such call in our message; but if there were, it was a very unnecessary one; for the governor has so accustomed us to find some of these charges in almost every message, and so delights in renewing them, after repeated refutations, that we might have expected them as matters of course. You have created a paper currency of your own, &c. This stale charge was fully refuted in our message of the seventeenth of May last, and now repeated without taking the least notice of that refutation. You pay your own wages out of the provincial money, when the law requires and provides for their being paid in another manner. This charge is premature, as we have not yet paid ourselves any wages out of any money. We gave the governor, indeed, five hundred pounds out of this provincial money, though the law requires and provides for his being supported by licences of public-houses, fees, &c. but that he might be sure of being right, he took both. The plain state of the matter is this: by the county levy act, the commissioners and assessors are directed "to adjust and settle the sum and sums of money which ought of necessity to be raised yearly, to pay for representatives service in general assembly, and to defray the charges of building and repairing of court-houses, prisons, work-houses, bridges, and causeways, and for destroying of wolves, &c. and to lay a tax for these purposes." But

other acts of assembly having directed that the provincial money, arising from the loan-office and excise, "shall be disposed of as the assembly of this province shall direct and appoint," former assemblies have, for many years past, paid provincial charges, and the public salaries out of that provincial money, and among others, their own small wages. Hence it happened, that the wages being otherways paid, the commissioners and assessors found no necessity of raising a tax for that purpose, and therefore have not done it, being no more obliged to do it without such necessity, than to tax for building court-houses when they have them already built, or to repair them when they need no repairs; or to pay for wolves heads when none are killed. As to the other charges of not keeping the borrowers in the loan-office strictly up to their yearly payments as the law required, we beg leave to say, that we cannot think this house is strictly accountable for all the faults of their, any more than the governor for the faults of his, predecessors; nor that every forbearing to execute a law is properly called dispensing with law. If it were, the executive power in most governments is greatly chargeable with the same offence. For our parts, whom the governor is pleased to load with this charge, we did in May last expressly order the trustees to use the utmost of their care and diligence to collect the outstanding quotas, and, to quicken them, drew orders on them nearly for the amount; but as a severe execution of that law would in some cases have been extremely injurious, as this evil had been almost imperceptibly growing, and gradually stole upon the assemblies in a long course of years; and as a sudden sale of all delinquent estates to recover their respective quotas, would have been the ruin of many; and no depreciation of the money or other considerable inconvenience has followed the forbearance, we conceive that former trustees and assemblies, who gained nothing to themselves by this indulgence of the people, though not free from blame, deserve a less severe censure than the governor is disposed to bestow upon them. The charge perhaps amounts to little more than this, that they did not exact from the people the payments that by law they ought to have exacted; which the governor calls dispensing with a law; they are not, how. ever, chargeable with exacting money from the people which by law they had no right to exact, as we apprehend the governor does, in the fees for marriage licences, by which many thousand pounds have been drawn from the inhabitants of this province. If this be not dispensing with law, 'tis making law, and we presume the governor alone has no more right to do the one, than the assembly alone the other. The last of this string of charges, "that we have taken upon us to administer the affirmation to our clerk, and several of our members not quakers" is a total mistake in point of fact. As an assembly we disclaim any right of administering either an affirmation or an oath; and have never administered an oath or affirmation to our clerk, or any member; but whenever an oath or affirmation is administered in the house, it is done by a justice of the peace. And our members are always qualified according to law.

The governor is pleased to say, 'we have often mentioned what we have done to promote the success of his majesty's arms under general Braddock.' We own that we have often mentioned this, but we have been forced to it by the governor's asserting as often in his messages, contrary to known fact, that we had done nothing, and would do nothing of that kind. But it seems we take to ourselves the services of particular men, in which, the governor says, we had no hand; and adds, 'that had we in time opened the proper roads, raised men, and provided carriages, and necessary provisions for the troops, we might now have been in peaceable possession of fort Duquesne. We beg leave to ask the governor, has the body no share in what is done by its members? has the house no hand in what is done by its committees ? has it no hand in what is done by virtue of its own resolves and orders? did we not, many weeks before the troops arrived, vote five thousand pounds for purchasing fresh victuals, and other necessaries for their use? did we not even borrow money on our own credit to purchase those provisions when the governor had rejected our bill? will the governor deny this, when he himself once charged it upon us as a crime? were not the provisions actually purchased by our committee, the full quantity required by the commissary, and carried by land to Virginia at our expence, even before they were wanted? did the army ever want provisions, till they had abandoned or destroyed them? are there not even now some scores of tons of it lying at fort Cumberland and Conegochieg? did the governor ever mention the opening of roads to us before the eighteenth of March, though the requisition was made to him by the quarter-master-general in January? did we not in a few days after send him up a bill to provide for the expence, which he refused? did not the governor proceed nevertheless to appoint commissioners, and engage labourers for opening the road, whom we afterwards agreed to pay out of the money we happened to have in our power? did the work ever stop a moment through any default of ours? was the road ever intended for the march of the troops to the Ohio? was it not merely to open a communication with this province for the more convenient supplying them with provisions when they should be arrived there? did they wait in the least for this road? had they not as many men as they wanted, and many from this province? were they not more numerous than the enemy they went to oppose, even after the general had left near half his army fifty miles behind him? were not all the carriages they demanded, being one hundred and fifty, engaged, equipt, and sent forward in a few days after the demand, and all at Wills's creek many days before the army was ready to march? with what face then, of probability, can the governor undertake to say, 'that had we in time opened the proper roads, raised men, and provided carriages, and necessary provisions for the troops, we might now have been in peaceable possession of fort Duquesne?

The governor is pleased to doubt our having such letters as we mentioned; we are therefore, in our own vindication, under a necessity of quoting to him some parts of them; and will shew him the originals whenever he

shall please to require it. The general's secretary, in his letter of the tenth of May to one of our members (who, in pursuance of a resolve of the house for the service of the army, waited on the general at Frederic, and there occasionally undertook the furnishing of waggons, which he performed with the assistance of some other members of the committee, and for that, and other services to the troops, received the thanks of the house at his return) says, 'you have done us great service in the execution of the business you have kindly undertaken; and indeed without it, I don't see how the service could have been carried on, as the expectations from Maryland have come to nothing.' And again, in his letter of May the fourteenth, the general orders me to acquaint you that he is greatly obliged to you, for the great care and readiness with which you have executed the business you undertook for him. At your request he will with pleasure discharge the servants that may have enlisted in the forces under his command, or any others for whom you may desire a discharge; and desires that you would for that purpose send him their names.' And again, in his letter of May the twentieth, I have only time to thank you once more, in the name of the general and every body concerned, for the service you have done; which has been conducted throughout with the greatest prudence and most generous spirit for the public service.' The general's own letter, dated the twenty-ninth of May, mentions and acknowledges the provisions given by the Pennsylvanian assembly' [though the governor will allow us to have had no hand' in it] and says, 'your regard for his majesty's service, and assistance to the present expedition, deserve my sincerest thanks,' &c. colonel Dunbar writes, in his letter of May the thir teenth, concerning the present of refreshments, and carriage horses sent up for the subalterns, 'I am desired by all the gentlemen, whom the committee have been so good as to think of in so genteel a manner, to return them their hearty thanks.' And again, on the twenty-first of May, 'your kind present is now all arrived, and shall be equally divided to-morrow between sir Peter Halket's subalterns and mine, which I apprehend will be agreeable to the committee's intent. This I have made known to the of ficers of both regiments, who unanimously desire me to return their generous benefactors their most hearty thanks, to which be pleased to add mine, &c.' and sir Peter Halket, in his of the twenty-third of May, says, 'The officers of my regiment are most sensible of the favors conferred on the subalterns by your assembly, who have made so well-timed and so handsome a present. At their request and desire I return their thanks, and to the acknowledgments of the officers, beg leave to add mine, which you, I hope, will do me the favor for the whole to offer to the assembly, and to assure them that we shall on every occasion do them the justice due for so seasonable and well judged an act of 'generosity.' There are more of the same kind, but these may suffice to shew, that we had some hand in what was done,' and that we did not, as the governor supposes, deviate from the truth, when, in our just and necessary vindication against his groundless, cruel, and repeated charge, 'that we had refused the proper, necessary

and timely assistance to an army sent to protect the colonies,' we alleged 'that we had supplied that army plentifully with all they asked of us, and more than all, and had letters from the late general, and other principal officers, acknowleging our care, and thanking us cordially for our services.' If the general ever wrote differently of us to the king's ministers, it must have been while he was under the first impressions given him by the governor to our disadvantage, and before he knew us; and we think with the governor, that if he had lived, he was too honest a man not to have retracted those mistaken accounts of us, and done us ample justice.

The governor concludes with telling us, that if our minutes be examined for fifteen years past, in them will be found more frivolous controversies, unparalleled abuses of governors, and more undutifulness to the crown, than in all the rest of his majesty's colonies put together.' The minutes are printed, and in many hands, who may judge on examining them whether any abuses of governors and undutifulness to the crown are to be found in them. Controversies, indeed, there are too many; but as our assemblies are yearly changing, while our proprietaries, during that term, have remained the same, and have probably given their governors the same instructions, we must leave others to guess from what root it is most likely that those controversies should continually spring. As to frivolous controversies, we never had so many of them as since our present governor's administration, and all raised by himself; and we may venture to say, that during one year, scarce yet expired, there have been more 'unparalleled abuses' of this people, and their representatives in assembly, than in all the years put together, since the settlement of the province.

We are now to take our leave of the governor; and indeed, since he hopes no good from us, nor we from him, 'tis time we should be parted. If our constituents disapprove our conduct, a few days will give them an opportunity of changing us by a new election; and could the governor be as soon and as easily changed, Pennsylvania would, we apprehend, deserve much less the character he gives it, of an unfortunate country.