USA > Pennsylvania > Chronicles of Pennsylvania from the English revolution to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1688-1748, Vol. II > Part 10
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Keith, arriving in Philadelphia on May 31, 1717, was then duly proclaimed as Lieutenant Governor. He took the oaths the next day. He was in the 38th year of his age, and, from his previous experiences which have been mentioned, may be said to have been more a man of the world than any of his predecessors except William Penn. The others had been in such circum- stances as better enabled them to take a stand against the leaders of the Assembly, but, with no private for- tune, and with a wife and five children, one born on the voyage, and a step-daughter, Ann Diggs, Keith was dependent for the support of his family upon what the office would yield. It was therefore his policy to in- gratiate himself with everybody, and particularly with those from whom the money was to come.
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In the petition of his creditors against his removal, it is stated that he had expressly stipulated with the Proprietary-i.e. with Hannah Penn-not to have re- course to the latter for remuneration. However, Keith was allowed to retain the fees and fines he might re- ceive, in which connection it is to be noted, that, in the various charges subsequently made against him, extor- tion of unusual fees does not figure, nor any demanding of money for an appointment. Certainly his first ap- pointments were made with the consent of nearly every- body. French was put in the Council, Andrew Hamil- ton was made Attorney-General, and the first named of those presented at the election in 1717 was appointed Coroner in each of the Upper Counties. The Assembly, meeting in August 1717, showed friendliness by voting to Keith 500l., and gave him also 50l. to pay his house rent for the ensuing year. In most years a liberal salary for a new colony was given to him. In May, 1719, Logan estimated as the only fees coming into the Governor's hands about 70l. annually for liquor licenses, which, with the perquisites complained of, but customary for years past, for granting ships registers and passes and "sometimes some other small inci- dents," added to the average salary from the Assembly, made the office worth annually 1000l., which, Logan, in commendation, remarked, Keith spent "handsomely, no man in the Lieutenancy having so well supported the dignity of a Governor as he."
For a while, Keith gave general satisfaction. Almost his first act was to secure a unanimous vote from the Assembly of the Lower Counties expressing the wish, that, if the Penn title was defective, the King would cure the defects without suffering any one to take ad- vantage of them. This, Keith forwarded to London, with a letter from himself arguing against a separation of those Counties from Pennsylvania.
It was to the interest of William Penn to have the
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British government carry out the agreement of pur- chase. Keith wrote, Sep. 24, 1717, to the Lords for Trade that he had found great plenty of iron ore, and hoped that they would promote any design offered for an iron manufactory, and hoped that the Crown would take dominion of the colony, and suggested that both sides of Delaware River and Bay, viz: West Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Lower Counties, be brought under one government, the number of Quakers in West Jersey making such a union natural. He recommended free trade on equal footing by all the colonies with the Indians, peace always to be made for all the colonies with all Indians in friendship with any of them, and that forts be erected, one of them at the head of the Susquehanna, under the government of Pennsylvania, each fort to contain fifty men in the King's pay.
Gookin, out of office, renewed the charges of certain persons' disaffection towards the House of Han- over. Keith calling the attention of the Council to the charges, notified Gookin to appear on a certain day, and prove them. Brought to the point, Gookin appeared and retracted, expressing the belief that he was mis- taken, and explaining that he had been very unwell, and his head had been affected. On being pressed as to whether directly or indirectly he knew anything in deed or words against the accused, he replied: "Nothing." The new Lieutenant-Governor asked if any member of the Board had any objection to taking this as a full acquittal, and the Councillors were glad enough to agree that it should be deemed such. Thus, perhaps by the boldness with which Keith faced it, a trouble was dis- sipated, the possible consequences of which were far reaching. Had the ex-Lieutenant-Governor persisted, had he embodied the accusation in an affidavit or a for- mal communication to the Assembly, the enemies of Logan might have carried an act for disqualifying him from holding office, which act Keith, with his ante-
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cedents, could not have dared to veto ; while, had Gookin communicated the charges to certain persons in Eng- land, the British Ministry would have had good reason for taking the government away from William Penn without compensation, and perhaps the cupidity of royal favorites would have brought about, by bill of at- tainder, the confiscation of even his property in the soil.
The balance, after paying for the runaway servants, of the 2000l. voted in 1711 for the Queen's use, came very slowly into the hands of the Treasurer, Samuel Carpenter, who, for want of any depository, charged himself with the actual money, and paid it out in his private dealings, just as he did with the proceeds of the flour and wheat in which, at certain prices, the tax- payers had the option of paying. There was no longer any banking association, and he was expected to be the bank. In 1712, while the amount was still uncollected, the Council decided that it should not be paid to Mr. Trent, as requested by Governor Hunter of New York, but await the order directly from the Queen. Car- penter dying in 1714, his widow and executrix, Hannah Carpenter, was authorized, by an Act of May 28, 1715, to receive what was uncollected, and to pay over the proceeds of the tax in her hands as executrix, or com- ing into her hands. On Nov. 12, 1717, Keith asked the Councillors whether they agreed with him in the opinion that it was his duty to call for an account, and that the money would be most properly lodged in his hands, as, by the Act of Assembly, the receipt of the Lieutenant- Governor for the time being was the only legal dis- charge to the Treasurer. The Council agreed. Sub- sequently, a large sum was paid to Keith, and, as the equivalent of 500l., there was conveyed to him by deed of March 5, 1718, from Andrew Hamilton, who had taken title from the executors, twelve hundred acres of land in Philadelphia County (in the present Horsham Township, Montgomery County), bounded on the north-
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east by Bucks County. Keith announced his intention of introducing there an extensive manufacture of grain, probably distilling, which he said would greatly benefit the Province. He built a dwelling house for himself, still standing, begun in 1721, and probably completed in 1722. From the subsequent ownership of the plan- tation by his stepson-in-law, Dr. Thomas Græme, it has been long known as "Græme Park." The sum, said to have been 1600l. in money and land, received from Car- penter's estate was not accounted for during Keith's term. It was not a credit against the Queen's right that he fitted out two sloops against pirates, and erected a battery of cannon. Against the statement in the Just and Plain Vindication, mentioned in the chapter on Paper Money, that he used a part for such public pur- poses, no allegation of their being paid for by the public with other money is made in the reply entitled More Just.
Piracy was common for a number of years after the war with France was ended by the treaty of Utrecht; and in October, 1717, six or seven vessels for or from Philadelphia were seized or plundered. Edward Teach (so called in our records, but Thatch or Thach by others), traditionally renowned as Blackbeard, who, as mate of a vessel from Jamaica, had visited Philadel- phia about 1714 or 1715, had become captain of a pirat- ical crew, and was at this time in Delaware Bay. He threatened to attack Philadelphia, when his consort vessel should arrive. However, Teach sailed off, but, meanwhile or later, had intercourse with the shore, he and probably some of his companions landing, and mak- ing their way peaceably to various places up the river, even to Philadelphia. On Nov. 12, 1717, Lt. Gov. Keith obtained the Council's agreement to a proclamation offering a reward for the discovery of any pirates or persons assisting pirates, with a promise of endeavor to obtain pardon for such pirates as would appear, and
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lead to the conviction of others. A royal proclamation having offered pardon to pirates surrendering them- selves before September 6, 1718, several persons ap- peared before the Lieutenant-Governor in February preceding, and were allowed freedom conditioned on future good behavior. Teach was mentioned by the Lieutenant-Governor to the Council in August, 1718, as reported to be then in the city. The amount spent on the two sloops sent to the Capes in pursuit of the pirates, was shown to the Council on Oct. 17, to have been about 90l. up to that date. The Councillors
thought that the same ought to be defrayed by the pub- lic. The sloops appear to have been commanded by Captain Raymond and Captain Naylor, but not to have overhauled the marauders. With the supposed conni- vance of Gov. Eden of North Carolina, Teach estab- lished his base up a creek in that province too shallow for the British frigates. Two sloops from those in the James went up, and, on Nov. 22, made an attack, and, while one sloop was sunk, Robert Maynard, in com- mand of the other, boarded Teach's boat, and shot him dead. Having thus dispersed the gang, and taken some prisoners, Maynard sailed back, with Blackbeard's head attached to the bowsprit.
Keith, himself no lawyer, expressed, on Feb. 11, 1717-18, dissatisfaction with the practice of issuing judicial commissions in the acting Governor's name, and raised the question whether they should not in future be issued in the King's name. The majority of the Coun- cillors-Assheton, the only lawyer, probably guiding them-reasoned that the King could grant permission to subjects to remove into any strange land upon such conditions as he might prescribe, that the laws of Eng- land could not accompany subjects so as to extend to lands settled by other races, like America, unless by some regular method such laws were so extended, that Charles II extended only the laws necessary for peace
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and safety until changed under the powers conferred upon the Proprietary and his People, that the royal pre- rogative was not so extended, but only the King's sov- ereignty preserved, that a distinction was to be made between commissions and writs, which had been made to run in the King's name, in conformity with the prac- tice of English law which it had been thought proper in some measure to introduce, and that, as the Proprietary could even appoint the Judges and Justices without issuing any commission, so he could do so by commis- sion in his own name, that being, moreover, the practice in Carolina and Maryland. Keith yielded, and it was . ordered that the commissions be issued in the Proprie- tary's name, and tested by the acting Governor.
The friendship of the Assembly was, however, bought at the cost of a quarrel with the Council. The Lieutenant-Governor determined not to be controlled by the latter in legislation, and served notice to this effect on February 22, 1717-8. The Assembly was about to take a long adjournment, having passed a num- ber of bills, including one levying a duty for three years on wines and rum or other spirits sold in less quantity than a gallon, out of the total proceeds of which duty the Lieutenant-Governor was to receive 8001. Obstruc- tion in Council at similar times of measures much de- sired by the People's representatives had, as we have seen, clogged the government, and might on this day put off the raising of money for its support. On that morning, a bill for the more effectual raising of county levies being then before the Board, he asked that any gentleman who had substantial objections to the bill would either then have his dissent and reasons there- for entered upon the minutes, or afterwards give the reasons, and the Lieutenant-Governor added very ominously, that, if he should find himself under the ne- cessity to pass the present or any other bill contrary to the majority of the opinions of the Board, he would
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likewise insert his reasons in the minutes. In the after- noon, two more bills being laid before the Board, it was moved that they should be read for the Councillors to speak upon them, as had been done to other engrossed bills, as the Assembly was expecting to be summoned for the final enactment by the Lieutenant-Governor of the laws subjected to his amendments. Several Coun- cillors stood up, and expressed dissatisfaction at the shortness of time given to them to offer amendments, and desired leave to withdraw, lest their presence at the passing of a bill without amendment should be con- strued as assent to it. The Governor then put the ques- tion to each present, remain or withdraw? Logan, Hill, Norris, and Dickinson withdrew; Preston, Palmer, and Assheton remained. The Assembly was sent for, and a number of bills became laws, including the aforesaid act placing a duty on retailed liquors, and the afore- said act relating to the county levies. Various taxes were imposed or so imposed in accordance with some public policy independent of revenue. Direct importa- tion from Great Britain or the place of growth was to be encouraged, and retaliation made for duties imposed by New York or Maryland on Pennsylvanians' goods, by the liability to ten per cent. ad valorem of goods brought from New York or Maryland, or by way of New Jersey or the Lower Counties, except goods by way of New York or Maryland, not purchased there; for three years, Madeira wine, Fayal wine, liquors, cider, hops, and flax imported were to pay duties varying according to whether in vessels owned by Pennsyl- vanians, or directly from place of growth, &ct .; for three years, tonnage was to be paid on all vessels bring- ing goods, unless the majority of the owners of the vessel were Pennsylvanians; the duty on negroes im- ported for sale was continued for three years. As laws were only required to be submitted to the Crown within five years after being passed, these temporary
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ones appear never to have been submitted, and this method of imposing a duty without consent of the King was followed in a later act continuing the negro duty and other duties until May 14, 1722, and in an act of May 12, 1722, for imposing a similar duty on negroes imported between May 13, 1722, and May 13, 1725. On Feb. 22, 1717-8, moreover, workhouses were provided for in the respective counties; but the most important act was that concerning feme sole traders, the basis of the Province's and Commonwealth's law on the subject, allowing the wives of absent husbands to carry on business, and sue and be sued in connection therewith, as if singlewomen.
Learning of the dire results of Gookin's construc- tion of the Act of Parliament on the subject of Quaker testimony, Keith determined to vindicate the Provincial laws, and have justice meted out to the murderers of Hayes at the hands of the Supreme Court, composed of Lloyd as Chief Justice, who was unable to administer an oath, and Yeates, Hill, and Trent, among whom Hill was similarly scrupulous. Four persons were indicted, two of them and presumably the others by a grand jury seventeen members of which were qualified by affirmation. The four were put on trial at Chester, the Lieutenant-Governor giving direct and public counte- nance to the proceedings by attending the court, and making a speech. More than twelve hundred persons were present. By a jury of which eight were upon affirmation, under one or other of the two acts for qualifying of Quakers passed on May 28, 1715, two of the accused were found guilty. They were sentenced to death, and, although they asked for a reprieve to appeal to England, both were hung. This enforcement of Quaker authority by a Churchman-as to this Lieu- tenant-Governor's religion, see the chapter on the Church of England-established his popularity. Al- though Logan, Hill, Norris, and Dickinson had de-
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livered to Keith a paper arguing that he must not enact laws without the Council's approval, the Council- lors accepted the situation for the time being. In joy at the passing of Gookin, it seemed as if an era of good feeling had begun, in which the Delawarean and the Pennsylvanian, the Quaker and the Church- man, David Lloyd and Penn's representative were, as the lion and the lamb in the prophecy, to lie down together.
The most reprehensible deed of this Lieutenant- Governor was that upon which Bolles alone of our his- torians has descanted, the reenactment of various English statutes punishing with death a number of crimes less than murder; but of this inhumanity, re- ligious men who would not shed blood in battle for their country were equally guilty. They were concerned-we will not say that Quakers were "excited"-over a rep- resentation to Great Britain about the trial in Chester County having been carried on without requiring cor- poral oaths, and, although the Lieutenant-Governor told them that he had taken steps to make such represen- tation innocuous, they listened to his suggestion to make their penal code conform to that of England, when, or as the price of, or as giving an opportunity for, securing from the Crown the authorization of the affirmation in judicial proceedings. Therefore, synchronously with the last days of William Penn, they reversed the steps which they had taken with him along the line of justly proportioned punishments, and arranged to destroy the lives of minor criminals according to the merciless laws of Tudors or Stuarts. The Act of Assembly, mis- called "An Act for the Advancement of Justice and more certain Administration thereof," and passed May 31, 1718, was prepared by Lloyd under resolution of the House; and, although the Votes of Assembly do not record the passing of the bill unanimously, it could not have passed without Quaker votes. The minutes of the
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Governor's Council note that that body suggested some amendments, but do not show any radical opposition from Hill, Logan, Norris, Preston, or Dickinson.
The Act recited that by King Charles's Charter the laws of property, and as to felonies, were to be the same as by the general course of the law of England until altered by the Proprietary and his freemen, and that it was a settled point, that, as the common law was the birthright of English subjects, so it ought to be their rule in British dominions, but Acts of Parliament had been adjudged not to extend to the colonies, unless they were particularly named in such Acts. Therefore it was provided that all inquests and trials of high treason should be according to the common law, observ- ing the directions of the statute laws of Great Britain on the subject, and that all inquiries and trials of the crimes or misprisions made capital by the Act itself or any other Act of Assembly should be according to cer- tain directions, among others, allowing to the defence challenges of the jurors, legal counsel, process for wit- nesses, and the same oath or affirmation for the wit- nesses as for the prosecution's witnesses,-all so far for securing justice for the accused,-also treating as if a conviction the standing mute, the not answering di- rectly, or the peremptory challenging of more than twenty of the panel. There was then added the sweeping provision that the laws of Great Britain, or of that part called England, in force at the passage of the Act, or in force in future, should be followed in the punishment.
By Penn and his Deputies in the days of Penn's mental competency, high treason had been left to the common law. The present author is not sure of any case of it having been tried in Penn's dominions in his time, although jurisdiction over it had been given to certain courts; and so with petit treason. Wilful and delib- erate murder was the only crime for which his statutes ordered a white person to be put to death : even the com-
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passing of the Proprietary's death was to be punished only by forfeiture and a year's imprisonment. It is a blot upon Penn's legislation, and may have resulted from pressure by the reactionaries of 1700, that, by the law passed in that year, the life of a negro was to be destroyed not only for a certain crime with animals, and for rape upon a white woman, but also for burglary. Soon after that law had been reenacted by Lieutenant- Governor Evans, certain negroes, who were slaves, were sentenced to death for burglary. Regard for property rights, including that to a man's labor, intervened, how- ever, where mercy had no more influenced Quaker legislators than she does militarists. As there was no provision, such as in other colonies, to compensate masters for so losing the slaves' labor, the punishment was commuted, to allow the master of these negroes to dispose of them in some other province, while, await- ing the transportation, the negroes were to lie in prison in irons at the master's expense, but first, on three suc- cessive market days, they were to be led from the market place (near 2nd and Market) up Second Street, and down through Front Street to the bridge, with arms extended and tied to a pole across their necks, a cart going before them, and they were to be whipped all the way on their bare backs and shoulders.
There had taken place an amelioration in the Eng- lish law for punishing capital crimes: the immunity whereby a clergyman's life was spared, had been ex- tended to all upon the first offence who, by showing that they could read, could be presumed to be in holy orders, and even to women, the guilty laymen being usually branded, and any guilty person remaining in prison for not more than a year. This "benefit of clergy" was made a feature of the Province's penal law by the Act in question, with the modification that the convict need not read, and the branding be on the left thumb, M for murder, T for other felony.
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This law of 1718 made certain crimes punishable by death without benefit of clergy, such as maiming pur- posely, and with malice aforethought, or counselling, aiding, or abetting such deed, the breaking into a dwell- ing house at night in even an unsuccessful attempt to commit murder or other felony, and the burning of a house, barn, stable, or even outhouse, if it had hay or corn in it. The statute passed against stabbing in 1 James I, cap. 8, entitled "an Act to take away the benefit of clergy for some kind of manslaughter," and the statute of 1 James I, cap. 12, to the same effect against witch- craft, were extended to Pennsylvania. The early laws of the dual colony had taken away capital punishment for certain unnatural crimes, rape, and robbery. Re- peal had left some of these at different times to the common law, but as the code stood for some years prior to the passage of the Act of 1718 the penalty for white persons did not go beyond whipping, branding, or life imprisonment. By this Act, the punishment was to be according to the statutes in force in Great Britain, which prescribed death without the clerical privilege; so that a man was to be killed even for assaulting a person on or near the highway, putting him in fear, and taking away money or goods of any value whatsoever, and even for counselling, aiding, "comforting," or abet- ting the perpetrators. The Pennsylvanians, neverthe- less, stopped before making any other kind of stealing punishable with death, and let fines, forfeitures, res- titution, and whipping suffice for the first and later offence.
The privileges of the Quakers secured by this Act were those which had not yet been confirmed by the Crown's approval of the Act of May 28, 1715, and which, although that Act appears to have embraced all cases, were now specified, viz: that the inquiry, hearing, trial, and determination of all crimes and offences and mat- ters and causes, should be by Judges, juries, inquests,
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and witnesses qualifying themselves, according to their conscientious persuasion, either by oath or the affirma- tion allowed by Act of Parliament to those called Quakers in England. Not even was the affirmation formerly desired by the radical Quakers made sufficient.
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