USA > Pennsylvania > Colonial records of Pennsylvania, Vol. V > Part 74
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"The Honourable JAMES HAMILTON Esquire."
The Secretary informed the Council, by Order of the Governor, that some Disturbance was likely to arise in the County of North- ampton by reason of a Claim of Right pretended to be made of all Lands within the forty-first and forty-second Degree of Latitude as far as to the South Sea, by the People of Connecticut, notwithstand- ing Mr. Penn's Grant included this Degree as far as the Limits of their Province, and that some of their People had been tampering with the Inhabitants of that County, and gave out that they would come and settle some of the Lands of Wyomink on Sasquehannah in the Spring, and sell others to such as should be disposed to buy of
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them : all which was set forth in a Letter from Mr. Parsons, which was read and ordered to be entered, and the Consideration of this Matter referred till the next Council.
" May it please the Governor :
" Having heard that some Persons under Pretence of an Au- thority from the Government of Connecticut had passed by Daniel Broadhead, Esquire's, in their Way to Wyomink upon Sasquehan- hana River, in order to view the Lands in those Parts, giving out that those Lands were included within the Boundaries of the Royal Charter to the Colony of Connecticut, and that they intended with a very considerable Number of Families to go and settle there next Spring, and at the same time inviting the present Setlers within this Province in their Way to accept of Titles under the Govern- ment of Connecticut for Part of those Lands, I went up to Mr. Broadhead's to speak with him and to be more fully informed of the Matter. Mr. Broadhead told me that my Information was but too true, and that some of his near Neighbours had accompanied three Gentlemen-like Men to Wyomink who produced a Writing under a large Seal, which they said was the public Seal of the Gov- ernment of Connecticut, empowering them to treat and agree with such Persons as were disposed to take any of these Lands of them ; and since waiting upon Mr. Broadhead the same has been confirmed to me by several other Persons of Reputation in these Parts. As I am very apprehensive this Affair may not only be very injurious to the Interest of the Honourable the Proprietaries, but that it may also be the Means of occasioning very great Disorders and Dis- turbances in the back Parts of the Province, I thought I should be wanting in my Duty if I did not give your Honour this Information.
"I am Your Honour's most obedient humble Servant,
"WM. PARSONS.
" PHILADELPHIA, 8th February, 1754.
" To the Honourable JAMES HAMILTON, Esquire."
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At a Council held at Philadelphia, Friday, 1st March, 1754. The Governor still indisposed.
PRESENT :
Thomas Lawrence,
John Penn, Robert Strettell, Benjamin Shoemaker, Esquires. Joseph Turner, Richard Peters,
The Minutes of the preceding Council were read and approved.
The Governor on the Twenty-Second of February received a Mess- age by Two Members from the House "That having gone through and naturally considered the several Papers relating to Indian
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Affairs which he had laid before them at this Sitting, and also ex- amined his Messengers concerning what they knew in relation to the Disposition of the French and Indians on Ohio, &ca-, desired to know if he had any thing more to communicate to the House that would give them further Light therein or be of Use to them in their Deliberations thereupon." To which the Governor was pleased to say He had not withheld any Thing from the House relating to the Indian Affairs now under their Consideration.
The Governor not thinking it by any means proper to pass by the Assembly's rude and unprecedented Treatment of him in their Minutes of last September, informed the Council that he had pre- pared an Answer thereto, which he submitted to their Consideration, and if it was approved he proposed to send it this morning to the House with a verbal Message by the Secretary.
The answer was read and approved, which with the verbal Mes- sage is as follows :
" Gentlemen :
"Upon perusing the printed Minutes of your House of the eleventh of September last, I find myself published to the World in so injurious a Light, merely for having paid Obedience to an Instruction from his Majesty, that I must not in Duty to the King as well as Justice to my own Character, suffer it to pass without some Animadversion ; And altho' you may not think yourselves accountable for the Conduct of a former Assembly, yet as the present House is made up of a great Majority of the same Mem- bers that composed the last, I shall not make any apology for ad- dressing myself to you as the Authors of the undeserved as well as unprovoked Treatment I complain of.
"The Paper I refer to is the Report of a Committee of Assem- bly appointed to consider my Message of the seventh of September, unanimously approved by the House, in which Report are pretty plainly contained the following Insinuations and Charges against me, Viz* :
"That I have not paid the same Regard to the Requests of your House as my Predecessor did to the Sentiments of a former Assem- bly on the like Occasion.
" That I have acted in direct Disobedience to an Instruction from his late Majesty of the Year 1723.
" That I have kept your Bill, the only Bill of that Year, till your late Session without intimating the least that I apprehended myself bound by an additional Instruction to Governor Thomas in the Year 1740.
" That I contend for and have actually assumed a Power over the King's Instructions, to remember or forget, to enforce or relax them, as it suits my Humour or my Purpose.
VOL. V .- 47.
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" With regard to the First, You are pleased to say that it is clear to you that both Governor Thomas and the House too agreed in the essential Point, viz: That the additional Instruction was bind- ing upon neither of them, And that the Assembly by making Use of the Distinction of ordinary and extraordinary Cases did convince him that the Instruction was not to be submitted to on its own Terms, and therefore by giving his Assent to an Act for granting Five Thousad Pounds for the King's Use in direct opposition to the King's Instruction, he shewed a greater Regard to the Sentiments of that Assembly than you have any Reason to believe I have to the repeated Requests of your House.
" There is something in this Paragraph that appears to me very remarakable; and altho' I would not willingly harbour a Suspicion that the Representative Body of a whole Province wou'd conde- scend to make use of any Degree of Artifice (so unworthy even of private Men) to mislead the understandings of the People merely with a View to asperse me, yet to me it has so much of that ap- pearance that I must take leave to examine the Fact upon which those Assertions are founded.
" In the Year 1746 the late Governor by his Majestie's Order called upon the Assembly for a sufficient Quantity of Provisions for the Subsistance of the Troops to be raised here for the Reduc- tion of Canada. In answer to which the House acquaints him that they are willing to give a Sum of Money for the King's Use, but upon Enquiry find that neither the Treasury nor Loan Office are furnished with such a Quantity beyond the other Exigencies of Government as they are willing to give, and therefore propose the striking a further Sum of Paper Money to be placed out at Interest in like manner as are the other Bills of Credit current by a former Act, by which 'means the Sum to be given might be repaid by the Interest of the Bills so lent out.
'4In answer to this the Governor, by Message of the Thirteenth of June, tells them that he wishes it were as much in his Power as it is in his Inclination to agree with them in the Method by them propos'd for raising it; But that they must be sensible, from the Royal Instruction communicated to a former Assembly, that he was forbid, under Pain of his Majestie's highest Displeasure, from passing any Act for striking Bills of Credit without a Clause restraining its Operation until the King's Pleasure should be known.
" In Reply to this Message the Assembly acquaint him that they are willing to hope, that upon reconsidering the Royal Instructions he may think himself at Liberty to give his Assent to a Bill for striking a further Sum of Money in Bills of Credit when any extra- ordinary Emergency requires it.
" Hereupon the Governor, by Message of the Fourteenth of June, again acquaints them that he really does not want Inclination to
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oblige them in any Thing they can reasonably desire ; and therefore his Mortification is the greater to be pressed upon a Point he is not at Liberty to comply with, the King's Instruction, founded on the Addresses of the Houses of Lords and Commons, being so positive that he cannot bring himself to such a Pitch of Boldness as to con- travene it, and promises himself, upon due Consideration of his being thus circumstanced, the House will proceed to some less excep- tionable Method of raising the Sum designed to be granted for the King's Usc.
"On Receit of this Message the House finding the Governor was not to be warped from his Obedience to the Royal Instruction, immediately proceeded to pass a Bill for giving Five Thousand Pounds for the Use of the King, to be paid out of the Bills of Credit remaining in the Loan Office for exchanging torn and ragged Bills, and for striking and emitting other Bills to the same value, to be sunk by a Tax in Ten Years, which Bill was afterwards enacted into a Law.
" I should now be glad to know, Gentlemen, upon this State of the Fact, which is taken from your own Minutes, what are the Proofs that have made it clear to You that the late Governor agreed that the King's Instruction was not binding upon him, and that he acted in direct Opposition to it, since the very contrary is evident, as well from the Whole Tenor of his Messages as from his Perse- verance in refusing to consent to a Bill upon the usual 'Terms, as the Assembly requested it (that is) without the suspending Clause, although as an Inducement thereto the House intimated to him an Intention they had of making an Addition to the Five Thousand Pounds already voted, which they well knew was like to prove as prevailing an Argument with him as any they could make use of. It is true he did, against the strict Letter of the Instruction, give his Assent to a Bill for striking Five Thousand Pounds to replace what had been given for the King's Use; but upon due Consider- ation it must be obvious to every one that the true and genuine Intention of that Instruction could relate only to Emissions on common and ordinary Occasions, by means whereof the Evils and Inconveniences specified in the Body of the Instruction had arisen, and to prevent which for the future appears clearly to have been the sole End and Purpose of the Instruction. If again, on the other Hand, it be considered that the Sum emitted in this Province by Vertue of the Act of 1746 was very small and occasioned by a very real Emergency, that the same was appropriated solely to his Majestie's Use, and that the Whole of it was to be sunk in a short Space of Time by Taxes, and without there being the least Probability of its producing any of the Inconveniences complained of, We must necessarily allow that the late Governor (however he might disregard the strict Letter) never departed from the Spirit and Intention of the Instruction, and, therefore, cannot properly be
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charged with having acted in direct Opposition to it; for it would be an Absurdity too glaring to suppose that any Government would voluntarily tie up the Hands of its Subject from serving it by such means as they are able in case of great Emergency ; and that this could never have been any Part of his Majestie's Intention or that of the Parliament in addressing him is further evident from the late Act respecting the Four Eastern Governments, who altho' prohibited on common and ordinary Occasions, yet in Cases of real Emergency are permitted to issue Bills of Credit on Condition that sufficient Funds be provided for sinking the same in a short Space of Time, which was exactly the Case with respect to the Sum emitted by the Governor and Assembly of this Province.
" Having I hope incontestably proved that the true and real In- tention of the Royal Instruction could have been no other than to guard against the Abuses enumerated in the Body of it, and that the Act for granting Five Thousand Pounds to the King's Use, passed by the late Governor in 1746, being of a singular and quite different Nature from Acts passed upon ordinary occasions, could not, therefore, be comprehended within the Meaning of the said Instruc- tion. I proceed now to ask the Gentlemen of the Assembly whether the Distinctions between an Act for emitting a large Sum of Money on a common and ordinary Occasion, the Interest of which the Country is to reap the whole Benefit of, to be current for a long Term of Time without Diminution, and an Act directly the Re- verse of this in all respects, did never occur to them ? If these dis- tinctions did occur to them, and it is next to impossible that they should not, I ask them again with what Degree of Candour they could affect to consider them as one and the same Case, and thence take Occasion to charge me with having less Inclination to oblige the People under my Government than my Predecessor? Did the House ever offer me a Bill of any Thing like the Tenor of that of 1746 that I refused my assent to? I am persuaded they will not say it. How, then, is it possible they should know that upon a like Occasion I should be less willing than my Predecessor to oblige them.
" Secondly. With regard to the additional Instruction of the Twenty-third of July, 1723, I have this to alledge for myself: that previous to my Message of the Seventh of September, I had caused the Minutes of Council and all the Papers in that Office to be very carefully Inspected without being able to discovor the least Foot- steps of that or any other Instruction to the like Purpose. And as I had never heard of any such being directed to the Governors of this Province I may reasonably Claim some Excuse, destitute as I was of the means of Information, for having presumed (for in Reality it is but a Presumption) that no Instruction of that kind had been at any time sent here ; Yet when the House without the least Occasion . given by me departs from that Decency both of Matter and Language ยท which they must be sensible ought inviolably to be observed between
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the different Branches of the Legislature, and instead of imparting to me the Information they were possessed of touching the Matter in Controversy go on to utter Reflections and Insinuations of a most invidious Nature, I am afraid they will stand in need of greater allowances for their Conduct than even a good-natured Man may be willing to make. Pray, Gentlemen, if I had even asserted, which I did not, that no Instruction like that of the Year 1723 had ever been directed to the Governor of this Province, would it have been any great Stretch of your Charity to have supposed me, as I really was, ignorant of it? Or would it have been unbecoming the Honour of your House to one in my Station to have enquired into the Truth of the Matter before you had proceeded to charge me in Print, for I can call it no less ;
" With remembering or not remembering a Royal Instruction as it best suited my purpose ;
" With having purposely forgot the Instruction of 1723, altho' possessed of the Original (which is not true) because it did not suit my Purpose, and remembering that of the Year 1740 because it did ;
" With having little Regard to the Liberties and Privileges of the People under my Government, tho' You are not able to give an Instance wherein I have infringed them ;
" With having totally disregarded the Lords Justices' Instruction . of 1723, which at that Time I had never seen nor heard of ?
"Or is my Character so notorious with You for falsehood and Dissimulation that any involuntary Mistakes by me committed would not have admitted of a milder Construction than You have been pleased to put upon them ? If I have given You Reason to enter- tain this Opinion of me, You will be the better justified in having censured so severely ; But if, on the contrary, I have ever acted with Integrity and good Faith towards all the Assemblies that have ever met during my Administration, then I must needs tell you that you have been vastly deficient in that Charity and Benevolence which, as Members of Society, We mutually owe to one another, as well as extremely cruel to yourselves, since, upon what other Principle than that of Charity can you hope to be excused for having positively asserted in your Message of the fifth of Septem- ber that there never had been a single Instance of the Passing any Law under the Restrictions contended for by me from the first Settlement of the Province to that Day, when in turning to our own Book of Laws you might have satisfied yourselves that in an Act prescribing the Forms of Declaration, &ca., the suspending Clause is inserted in the fullest manner ? And yet I sincerely declare that I never thought otherwise of this than as of a Mistake you had fallen into thro' Precipitation and a Zeal for the Cause you had in hand, without ever thinking I might be justified in insinuating that You either willingly told an untruth or that You thought your-
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selves at Liberty to remember or forget the aforesaid Act of As- sembly as it best suited the Purpose in your Controversy with me.
" I confess myself at a Loss to understand what is meant by the House in saying that I have acted in direct Disobedience to the Lords Justices' Instructions of the Year 1723, as on the most care- ful Recollection I cannot call to mind the having passed any Act that can possibly fall within the Meaning of that instruction (which relates alone to private Acts concerning Lands and Messuages) since my accession to this Government. Yet even supposing that to have been the Case, I may with some appearance of Reason ex- pect to be pardoned, since it is hoped that none can be so unjust as to construe that a willful Disobedience which arose entirely from my Ignorance of their being any such Instruction after taking the utmost Pains to be informed.
"I acknowledge, Gentlemen, You have now shewn me that such an Instruction does subsist, and am extremely glad to hear You at least declare it to be your Opinion (however contradictory to many Parts of your Message and Report) that all Royal Orders and Instructions subject the Governors to whom they are directed and their Successors too to the Royal Displeasure, unless such Instruc- tions are revoked by his Majestie's Authority. If, then, as You justly say, all Royal Orders and Instructions unrevoked are bind- ing upon the Governors to whom they are directed, and their Suc- cessors too, Why is so much Resentment shewn on your Part on account of my having paid Obedience to those Instructions which by your own acknowledgment I am bound to pay under Pain of his Majestie's Displeasure. Upon this Declaration of yours I will once more appeal to your own Breasts with Regard to the Reasonable. ness of your requesting me to disregard those instructions at the certain Disadvantage of incurring his Majestie's Displeasure, and perhaps to the Injury of my private Fortune and Loss of my Cha- racter. And if (as you seem to suppose) the King, by having passed the Paper Money Act faid before him in 1751, has judged all the Purposes of that Instruction to be answered, can there be a more favourable Season than the present to apply to his Majesty for a Revocation of it? Or by whom can the Application be so properly nade as by the People's Representatives, who look upon their Con- stituents to be most aggrieved by it, since by your own acknow- ledgment no Governor can dispense with paying Obedience to it until revoked, but at the the Risque of incurring his Majestie's Dis- pleasare, which it is very improbable any Governor will be hardy enough to do.
" Thirdly. You are pleased to say that I have kept your Bill, the only Bill of that Year, till your last Sessions, without intimating in the least that I apprehended myself bound by an additional Instruc- tion to Governor Thomas in the Year 1740.
" Had I been invested, Gentlemen, with a Power to direct the
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Assembly how many Bills they should prepare and offer to me in any one Year, and had made use of that Power to limit or re- strain them to the particular Bill in Question .in Exclusion of all others, there might have been some Reason for their having laid such Stress upon the Words only Bill, but as it is well known that no Governor is or ought to be possessed of such a Power, and that the Assembly is at full Liberty to prepare and offer so many Bills, and of such sort as appear to them expedient, without the least Check or Control from any Body, to whose Account ought the fault to be charged (if in Truth it be a Fault) that it was the only Bill of that Year? To mine, who neither had nor claimed any Au- thority to interfere at all in their Proceedings ?- Or to their's, who altho' invested with the Power, yet upon that Occasion declined to make Use of it? That I kept your Bill from the Month of May to the Month of August following in order the better to consider it, is very true, nor will you deny that I had an unquestionable Right so to do; but how could that possibly interfere with your preparing Bills to be passed into Laws in the Months of January and February preceding, which is known to be the usual Time of the Assembly's Sitting to do Business here ? Or to what Purpose should I have intimated to you any Thing respecting that Instruc- tion till the Bill came before you again upon my Amendments ? At which Time I had so little Apprehension of your objecting to the Validity of that Instruction that I looked on the Bill as good as passed, and that not only the Members of the Assembly but every Inhabitant the least conversant in publick affairs were acquainted with that standing Instruction.
"Fourthly. That I contend for and have actually assumed a Power over the King's Instructions to remember or forget, to en- force or relax them, as it suits my Humour or my Purpose.
"I am sorry, Gentlemen, You should have spent so much Time and Labour in endeavouring to find out the Meaning of what ap- pears to me a very plain and artless Sentence in my Message of the seventh of September, and which must have appeared equally plain to you had it been read with the same Candid Disposition with which it was wrote. Let us examine the Words themselves and the Occasion of their being used, as from thence we shall see whether they will bear the Interpretation You have been pleased to put upon them. The Assembly in their Message of the fifth of September made use of several Arguments to prove that the King's Instruc . tion either never was, or that the Ends of it having been answered it could no longer be binding on the Governors of this Province, and therefore hoped I would think myself not at all concerned therein and pass their Bill as it then stood, that is in direct Oppo- sition to the King's Instruction. But as I had not the good For- tune to be convinced by their Arguments, and as it would have been highly impertinent in me to have entered into a Vindication
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of what had been advised by the Two Houses of Parliament and assented to by his Majesty, I concluded with telling them in my Answer that they would certainly allow me to judge for myself of the Necessity I was under of paying Obedience to the King's In- struction when a Disregard of it was threatned with his Majestie's highest Displeasure; the Meaning of which Sentence can be no other than this, That as I was threatened with the King's highest Displeasure in case I disobeyed his Instruction, therefore they must allow me to judge for myself between the Force of the Arguments by them adduced to invalidate the said Instruction, and my own Opinion of its continuing to bind me.
" It is impossible any other Construction can be fairly put upon these Words; And yet the Assembly, by having in the first place taken something for granted which in itself is absolutely without Foundation, and in the next by perverting the clear Meaning and common Sense of my Words, have plainly insinuated as if I con- tended for and actually assumed a Power over the King's Instruc- tions to remember or forget, to enforce or relax them, just as it suited my Humour or my Purposes. This, Gentleman, among many others, is such an Instance of unfairness as astonishes me, and could in my opinion have proceeded from nothing less than a determined resolution to differ with me, and which (could I prevail on myself to break thro' the Rules I have prescribed for my conduct with regard to Gentlemen in your Station) would require, as it justly merits, the sharpest Return.
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