sentation; but, if numbers are necessary, we trust we shall neither want a sufficient number of hands nor hearts to support and second us, till we finally obtain such a reasonable demand."

To a committee it was referred, together with the address from certain of the people called Quakers, (recommending peaceable measures, and insinuating, that otherwise many as well as themselves would be under a necessity to suffer rather than to pay,) and that concerning unnecessary disputes with the governor, as containing sundry matters of an extraordinary nature, for consideration; and, in the mean time, the House plied the governor with message after message, concerning the bill for regulating their Indian trade, and that for the supply. Both parties apparently wanted to gain time. It was equally dangerous for the assembly to provoke or parley with a multitude; and nothing but new matter from the frontier could give the governor any new advantage over them.

His answer to the assembly on the 14th of November was, "that he had given the bill relating to the Indian trade to his clerk to transcribe;" and that, as to the other, "he was then reconsidering it, according to the request of the House; and when he came to any resolution upon it, the House might expect his final answer; but he did not know when that would be."

At last, on the 17th, that is to say, after having been again quickened by another message, he sent down the latter, with a paper of amendments and a written message, different both in matter and manner from, but altogether as illusory as the former. For, having maintained, as before, that he was not authorized by his commission to pass such a bill, and yet agreed with the assembly, that their dispute must, in the end, be

determined by his Majesty, he changed his objection from the thing to the mode, which he argued was unprecedented, and, in effect, impracticable; "For," he said, "the King could not properly give his assent to some parts of an act and reject others;" and he then suggested another expedient, namely, for the House to adopt his own amendments sent down with the bill, by which the proprietary estate was entirely exempted; and to prepare and pass another bill, whereby the said estate was to be taxed in the same proportion with every other estate, only not by assessors chosen by the people, but by commissioners reciprocally chosen by himself and the assembly, and also named in the bill; together with a suspending clause, that the same should not take effect till it had received his Majesty's approbation. All was closed with a sort of protestation, “that nothing but an implicit confidence in his Majesty's goodness and justice, that he would disapprove it if it was wrong, and his own most sincere and ardent desire of doing every thing in his power for the good and security of the people committed to his care, could have induced him to pass a law in any shape for taxing the said estate;" and a predecision, "that, if they were equally sincere and equally affected with the distresses and miseries of their bleeding country, they could have no objection to this method of affording immediate succour and relief."

What the doctrine was, established in the province, concerning suspending clauses, is already before the reader, and consequently the inference, in case the assembly had been weak enough to swallow the bait thus hung out for them. But they were neither to be so amused by him, nor so terrified by his allies without doors, as either to forego the use of their understandings, or to act with their eyes open as if they had no eyes at all.

Having, therefore, sufficiently canvassed the matter, they first resolved, that they would adhere to their bill without admitting any of the governor's proposed amendments; and then, to make him sensible that they also had some artillery to ply, as well as he, they farther resolved, "That, in case the governor should persist in refusing his assent to their bill, which was so just and equitable in its nature, and so absolutely necessary at that time for the welfare of the British interest in America, after he should receive the answer of the House to his message then under consideration, they would make their appeal to the throne by remonstrance, humbly beseeching his Majesty to cause their present governor to be removed, or take such other measures as might prevent the fatal consequences likely to ensue from his conduct."

This vote was unanimous; and they farther took notice in their minutes of some dissatisfaction expressed at an Indian treaty held in the year 1753, by one of the chiefs of the Shawanese, and some promise made to him on the behalf of the proprietaries, which had not been complied with.

The governor, on the other hand, sent down the secretary with intelligence of another massacre committed by the Indians at a place called Tulpehocken; and in a written message farther observed on the supply bill he had returned, "that no money could be issued in virtue of it till the next January, before which the greatest part of the province might be laid waste, and the people destroyed or driven from their habitations; thence proceeded to demand an immediate supply of money; and concluded with a signification, that, should they enable him to raise money on the present occasion, a law founded on the act of Parliament for punishing mutiny and desertion would be

absolutely necessary for the government of them, when not joined with his Majesty's regular troops.

This was no sooner read than the House adjusted their answer to his former message, in which "They maintained the propriety of their bill in point of mode as well as matter; that conditional or alternative clauses were far from being unprecedented; that the act was so constructed as to be complete either way; that, on the contrary, in pursuing the other method recommended, of passing two bills diametrically contradictory to each other, in the same breath, they might be justly charged with doing what would be, not only unprecedented and absurd, but what would infallibly secure the end aimed at by the governor, to wit, exempting the proprietaries from taxation; that, as to the expedient of assessing the proprietary estate by commissioners instead of assessors, they did not see the necessity of it; that the Lords of Parliament had, in the year 1692, proposed a like amendment to a money bill, but, finding it could not be carried, had dropped it then and never revived it since; that it was one of the most valuable rights of British subjects to have their money bills accepted without amendments, a right not to be given up without destroying the constitution, and incurring greater and more lasting mischiefs than the grant of money could prevent; that of the twenty amendments offered by the governor to the fifty thousand pounds bill of the last assembly, the present assembly had admitted every one of them that was of any consequence into the present bill, merely for the sake of avoiding all dispute, except that of exempting the proprietary estate; and even that had been so modified as they imagined no objection could remain; that they found, however, in this instance, how endless it was to admit such changes, seeing the governor now wanted KK *

to amend his own amendments, add to his own additions, and alter his own alterations; so that, though they should now accede to these, they could not be sure of being ever the nearer to a conclusion; that, as the passing the proposed separate bill was equally inconsistent with the governor's construction of the prohibitory clause in his commission, which he seemed now to have got over, so they hoped he would not, for the sake of a mere opinion, concerning mode and propriety, any longer refuse a bill of so great importance to his Majesty's service, and even the proprietary estate, going daily to ruin, as well as the relief of the province; and that the same implicit confidence in his Majesty's goodness, which induced him to pass such a bill in any shape, might also encourage him to believe, that any little impropriety, if any there was, would be graciously passed over; that, if there could be any doubts, which was most affected with the miseries of the province, they, who were most of them natives of it, and who had all of them their estates there, or he, a stranger among them, a consideration of the many bills they had offered in vain for its relief, and their earnest endeavours to give such great sums to that end, would solve them all; and that, upon the whole, the House adhered to their bill without amendments; because it was a money bill; because the whole sum was granted to the crown, and to be paid out of the pockets of the subject; and because it was, in their judgments, a reasonable one. Lastly, they made it their request, that since, at such a time as that, disputes and contentions between different parts of the government could not but be extremely prejudicial both to the King's service and the welfare of the country, they might thenceforth be laid aside; and that the governor, by passing this just and equitable bill, would lay the foundation of such