The assembly thus replied.

'As to the present charter, which the governor found ni being at his arrival, though it be far short of an English constitution, yet even that has been violated by several inroads made upon it: and if the governor cannot grant the just and reasonable demands of the people's representatives agreeable with an English establishment, there is cause to conclude, that the proprietary is not fully represented here: and, however the charter was received, yet it was not with such unanimity as is alleged, because diminutive of former privileges; neither was it prepared by the house of representatives, but done in great haste.'

• We are not striving for grants of power, but what are essential to the administration of justice, and agreeable to an English constitution: and if we have not been in possession of this these twenty-four years, we know where to place the fault, and shall only say, it is high time we were in the enjoyment of our rights.'

And lastly, the said assembly having drawn up two several remonstrances to the proprietary, reciting the particulars of their grievances and complaints against the said governor, took occasion in the last of them, dated June 10, 1707, to express themselves as follows.

'We, and the people we represent, being still grieved and oppressed with the mal-administration and practices of thy deputy, and the ill carriage, unwarrantable proceedings, and great exactions of thy secretary, are like to be destroyed by the great injustice and arbitrary oppressions of thy evil ministers, who abuse the powers given thee by the crown, and we suppose have too much prevailed upon thee to leave us hitherto without relief.

That the assembly which sat here on the 26th of the sixth month, 1704, agreed upon certain heads or particulars, which, according to the order of that day, were drawn up in a representation, and was signed by the speaker, and sent thee

4 The governor had rejected the bill proposed by the assembly for establishing courts of justice, &c. and had done it by an ordinance of his

own.

by a passenger in John Guy's brigantine, who was taken into France, from whence the same representation was conveyed to thy hands; whereby thou art put in mind, upon what score the purchasers and first adventurers embarked with thee to plant this colony, and what grants and promises thou made, and the assurance and expectations, thou gave them and the rest of the settlers and inhabitants of this province, to enjoy the privileges derived from thy own grants and concessions, besides the rights and freedoms of England: but how they were disappointed in several respects, appears, in part, by the said representation, to which we refer; and become supplicants for relief, not only in matters there complained of which are not yet redressed, but also in things then omitted, as well as what have been lately transacted, to the geievous oppression of the queen's subjects, and public scandal of this government.'

'We are much concerned, that thou conceived such displeasure as thou did against that assembly, and not in all this time vouchsafe to shew thy readiness to rectify those things which they made appear were amiss: nor hast thou shewed thy particular objections to the bills, which, with great care and charge, were then prepared, for confirming thy charters to this city and country, respecting both privileges and property, and for settling the affirmation instead of oaths: but on the other hand, we found, to our great disappointment, that thou gave credit to wrong insinuations against them, as、 appears by thy letter from Hyde-Park, dated the twenty-sixth of the twelfth month, 1704-5, wherein thou treated some particulars very unfriendly, and without any just grounds blamed the people's representatives, who, we perceive by their proceedings, were ready to support the government under thy administration, and desired nothing but to have their just rights, privileges, and properties confirmed, the judicatories regularly established, the magistracy supplied with men of virtue and probity, and the whole constitution so framed, 'that the people called Quakers might have a share with other christian people in the government, which thou always gave them an expectation of, and which they justly claim as a

point of right, not for the sake of honour, but for the suppressing of vice, &c.'

To wade through the whole of this provincial controversy which, at several reprisals, lasted till Gookin was superseded in the year 1717, and replaced by William Keith, Esq. (afterward Sir William Keith, Bart.) would be a task of great prolixity, and what consequently might prove as tedious to the reader as laborious to the writer.

Enough has been recited, to shew upon what terms Mr. Penn was first followed by his flock, as a kind of patriarch, to Pennsylvania; as also, what failures in his conduct towards them were complained of by them; and as to the conduct of the several assemblies, which, in the several periods of this interval, maintained this controversy, a bare perusal of their proceedings is in general sufficient for their justification.

Men they were; passions and interests they consequently had; and, if they were sometimes carried away a little too far by them, it is obvious the passions and interests of others worked up the ferment first, and never relented to the last.

It is true, an over rigid performance of conditions is not to be expected of government, and seldom can be exacted from it: but then if the representative part is not tenacious, almost to a fault, of the rights and claims of the people, they will in a course of time lose their very pretensions to them.

Against Logan, the proprietary's minister, stands upon record, still unanswered, thirteen articles of malversation, by way of impeachment, which the governor (Evans) found means to evade, against the repeated offers of the assembly to produce their witnesses and fasten their proofs upon him and against the governor himself, twelve in the shape of remonstrances, which argue him loose in principle, arbitrary in disposition, and scandalous in his private life and deportment.

:

So unpopular was he, that an unanimous vote of thanks to the proprietary was passed on his being removed, almost before his face, for he was still a resident among them: and as

he had been Logan's screen, so his successor, Gookin, was little better than Logan's tool. The first had the name; the latter the power; and by the help of the council, spurred him on, or reined him in, as he pleased.

Both were necessitous, consequently craving alike; and having each considered himself first, and the proprietary next, had little consideration left for the crown, and none at all for the people.

If Evans adventured to act in many respects as if there was neither charter nor assembly, or, rather, as if he was authorised by his commission to do what he pleased in contempt of both, (as appears by his arbitrary dismission of one. assembly, merely because they could not be brought to obey his dictature) Gookin after his example, and at the instance of Logan, declared another assembly to be no assembly, and refused to hold any further correspondence with them: and yet when he was on the point of being recalled, he was both mean enough and desperate enough to convene the assembly, purposely to make them this laconic proposition, viz. "That, for the little time he had to stay, he was ready to do the country all the service he could:-and that they might be their own carvers, in case they would in some measure provide for his going back to seek another employment." Of which, however, they made no other use than to gratify him with a present of two hundred pounds.

Lastly, that the reader may have a general idea of those assemblies, represented in proprietary language as so refractory and turbulent, so pragmatical and assuming, let him accept of a passage out of one of their own papers to governor Evans, in which they thus characterise themselves. And though we are mean men, and represent a poor colony, yet as we are the immediate grantees of one branch of the legislative authority of this province, (which we would leave to our posterity as free as it was granted) we ought to have been, and do expect to be more civilly treated by him that claims the other branch of the same authority, and under the same royal grant, and has his support from us and the people we represent.

It is by this time apparent enough, that though the proprietary and popular interests spring from one and the same source, they divide as they descend: that every proprietary governor, for this reason, has two masters; one who gives him his commission, and one who gives him his pay: that he is on his good behaviour to both: that if he does not fulfil with rigour every proprietary command, however injurious to the province or offensive to the assembly, he is recalled: that if he does not gratify the assembly in what they think they have a right to claim, he is certain to live in perpetual broils, though uncertain whether he shall be enabled to live at all: and that, upon the whole, to be a governor upon such terms, is to be the most wretched thing alive.

Sir William Keith could not be ignorant of this: and therefore, however he was instructed here at home, either by his principal or the lords of trade, resolved to govern himself when he came upon the spot, by the governing interest there: so that his administration was wholly different from that of his two predecessors.

With as particular an eye to his own particular emolument, he did indeed make his first address to the assembly: but then all he said was in popular language: he did not so much as name the proprietary: and his hints were such as could not be misunderstood, that in case they would pay him well, he would serve them well.

The assembly, on the other hand, had sense enough to discern, that this was all which could be required of a man who had a family to maintain with some degree of splendor, and who was no richer than plantation governors usually are in short, they believed in him, were liberal to him, and the returns he annually made them were suitable to the confidence they placed in him: so that the proper operation of one master-spring kept the whole machine of government, for a considerable period of time, in a more consistent motion than it had ever known before.

Of all political cements reciprocal interest is the strongest; and the subject's money is never so well disposed of, as in the maintenance of order and tranquillity, and the purchase