USA > Pennsylvania > Colonial records of Pennsylvania, Vol. VI > Part 64
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" You have in the Message now before you, and in several others, taken great pains to infuse into the minds of the people, particu- larly the Germans, that the Government have designs to abridge them of their Privileges and to reduce them to a State of Slavery. This may and will alienate their affections from His Majesty's Government, destroy that Confidence in the Crown and its Dele- gates, which at this time is particularly necessary, and render all the Foreigners among us very indifferent as to the success of the French attempts upon this Continent, as they cannot be in worse Circum- stances under them than you have taught them to expect from the King's Government.
"This you may with your usual Confidence call Duty, Loyalty, and Affection to his Majesty, but I am convinced it will not be esteemed such by his Majesty and his Ministers, before whom all these matters must be laid, and how the innocent people of this Province may be affected thereby Time will shew.
"You are pleased to tell me that I am destitute of Skill and Abilities for my Station, and have not the Spirit of Government in me. Gentleman, I never made any Boast of my Abilities, nor
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do I pretend to know what you mean by the Spirit of Government ; But this I know, that if I had enough of the spirit of Submission, I was early given to understand, by some of your Messages, that you would have then pronounced me well qualified for the adminis- tration of this Province even without the assistance of Instructions or the advice of my Council.
"To your Spirit of Government, however, or in other words your Inclinations to increase and render permanent your own powers, is to be attributed all to your late extraordinary proceedings and the defenceless state of the Province; for the sake of gratifying this you scruple not to stir up his Majesty's Subjects against his Gov- ernment, forgetting all Duty to your Sovereign and all Decency to those in authority under him.
" Your answers do not exculpate you from my charges against you for taking on yourselves great and mighty powers, and since you call upon me to particularize them I shall gratify you. You have created a paper Currency of your own, and ordered the col- lectors of Excise and the Trustees of the Loan Office to receive it against Law. You pay your own wages out of the provincial Money, when the Law requires and provides for their being paid in another manner, notwithstanding it is declared by Law that no persons indebted on Mortgage to the Loan Office shall be delinquent in their payment above a Year, and your Com- mittees are enjoined in the Settlement of their accounts to reckon all such outstandings as Cash in the Trustees' hands, yet this you have dispensed with in the Settlement of the Trustees' accounts Year after Year, and suffered the Borrowers to continue in arrears for Years, many of them for not less than Ten,-a practice tending to depreciate the value of the Money and greatly injurious to the Borrowers-and lastly, instead of the Oaths required by law to be taken to his Majesty by all men in publick office, you have taken upon you to administer the affirmation to your Clerk and several of your own Members, tho' not of the people called Quakers, nor at all scrupulous against taking an Oath, which deprives his Majesty of the security provided by Law to be given by such as hold Offices or act in publick trusts.
" You have often mentioned what you have done to promote the success of his Majesty's arms under General Braddock, and for the Defence of the Province, and say, You have Letters from the late General thanking You for your Service. The truth of this I must beg leave to question, as the late General was too honest to say one thing to You and another to the King's Ministers. He might acknowledge the services of particular men, but how you can take those to yourselves as an assembly when you had no hand in what was done I am at a Loss to know. I think it will not be doubted but that had you in Time opened the proper Roads, raised men, and provided carriages and necessary provisions for the Troops, as this
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was the only Province able, in the General's situation, to furnish him with them, we might now have been in peaceable possession of Fort Du Quesne.
" In fine, Gentlemen, I must remind you that in a former Mess- - age you said you were a plain people that had no joy in Disputation. But let your Minutes be examined for Fifteen years past, not to go higher, and in them will be found more artifice, more time and money spent in frivolous controversies, more unparallelled abuses of your Governors, and more undutifullness to the Crown, than in all the rest of his Majestie's Colonies put together. And while you continue in such a temper of mind I have very little hopes of good either for his Majesty's Service or for the Defence and protec- tion of this unfortunate Country.
"ROBERT HUNTER MORRIS.
"Philada", September 24, 1755."
The Bill for the choice of Inspectors in the Countys of Chester and Lancaster, &ca-, was read and sent to the House with a Message that the Governor assented thereto.
The following Letter from Colonel Blanchard to the Commanding Officer at Albany, which gives the first account of the action at Lake George, having been forwarded by Express from Governor Hardy was read :
A Letter from Col. Blanchard to the commanding Officer at Albany.
" FORT AT THE GREAT CARRYING PLACE, Septr. 9th, 1755.
" Sir :
"The tidings I gave you of yesterday relative to our army at Lake George. We have fresh tidings from divers hands last night and this morning, tho' nothing by Express but by persons casually stragled from the Army in the Battle.
"Three Frenchmen came in here this morning (one a Captain), and the Intelligence from all parties agree that they were in Battle from the morning till night, the most Bloody and Severe.
" We have no certainty in whose favour it turned, but from all circumstances hope that our Forces have sustained their post as yet.
"The Frenchmen say they were eleven hundred and Six of Indians who engaged in the morning a part of our Men, which was 700 Men, One mile and half from the General Camp, headed by Colo, Williams, soon reinforced by 500 more, I hear by one of our men from the Camp, but were (after three hours' fight) drove back into the Camps, and there engaged the Artillery and fought till near night. This minute sundry more are come in of our Guards, who run off about two of the clock expecting our Army was fallen
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into their hands. The great Guns played till after four o'clock. A party of our Fort set out for their Relief of about three hundred, mett the Enemy about two Miles from the Lake, engaged them, and fought till sun down, when two of our party run off and left them, continuing a smart Fire, had drove about three or four hun- dred from their packs, and then had maintained their Ground. How the Army or that party have fared since, or who has gained the Field, we know not. No Express from either party has arrived, which gives me uneasiness. Lieutent King's son (who this minute arrived with another) who guess the number Seven or Eight thou- sand. The Frenchmen say Three thousand seven hundred set out, and Two thousand lodged for Recruit if needed. I leave to guess to all these promiscuous accounts. The Army came within two miles of this Fort Sunday afternoon, designed to attack us, but tacked and went to the Lake. If they have got success there they will pay us a speedy visit likely. No tidings of the Fight being over yet, We conclude this Information will be sufficient for your alarm, and that you will quick determine what to do in this Emer- gency. I am, Sir,
" Your most humble Servant, "JOSEPH BLANCHARD.
"P. S .- I apprehend the advisement of this is necessary to the Massachusetts and the Colonys of Connecticut and Rhode Island with all Dispatch.
"To the Officers in the Chief Command of the Militia at Albany."
On the 27th Sept. 1755, The Bill for directing the choice of inspectors in the counties of Chester, Lancaster, York, Cumberland, Berks, and Northampton, having been engrossed and compared was this day enacted into a Law, Sealed and Lodged in the Recorder's office.
On the 29th of September the following Message to the Governor was left with the Secretary :
A Message to the Governor from the Assembly.
" May it please the Governor :
The sincerity of the Governor's regret at the unnecessary Disputes which subsist between us the very first Paragragh of his Message gives us some Room to question, since it begins with a new charge that those Disputes are of our introducing, and that we 'delight to introduce them to turn the attention of the people from things of the last Importance to their future safety.' This charge itself seems designed to introduce another unnecessary dispute, since all that are acquainted with our disputes know by whom they were introduced and who it is that delights in disputing.
" That our Message of the nineteenth of August was 'a very tedi- ous' one to the Governor we make no Doubt. It must have been
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so in the matter and might probably be so in the manner. There was too much Truth in it and too little Flattery. We suppose, too, that the task of answering it might be as tedious as the Message itself, since to shorten the work he has passed over a number of the most important points and all our Reasonings upon them without attempting an answer, and we think he cannot justly complain of want of Time to answer that Message since we sat four days after delivering it, adjourned for near four Weeks, and had been met again nine days before we received the answer which, now we have it, we find it to be such an one as might have been made in a few Hours. But had our Message really been 'filled with the grossest Calumny and abuse,' as the Governor says it was, we cannot think with the Governor that it would, therefore, have been 'beneath him as a Gentleman to make any Reply to it.' If we were of that sen- timent we should make none to the Message we are now considering. We think that what is beneath a Gentleman is not the answering of Calumny but the making use of it; And we wish, for the Governor's sake, that he had been of the same opinion ; For he might then pro- bably have treated us in a manner more suitable to his Character as a Gentleman, and had more Regard to the preservation of that Character.
"The Governor denies that our Claim of the privilege 'of having our Bills granting supplies past as they are tendered without Amend- ments is warranted by the words of the Charter;' tho' it gives us 'all the powers and privileges of an Assembly according to the Rights of the free-born subjects of England, and as is usual in any of the King's plantations in America.' If the free-born subjects of England do not exercise this Right by their Representatives in Parliament, and it is not usual in any of the King's plantations in America, then we are in the wrong to claim it, and the Governor is right in deny- ing it; But Facts are for us, and these in this case the Governor does not deny. Our predecessors may in some few Instances have waved that right, but they have never given it up, nor will, as we hope, those that shall succeed us. We trust they will be more cautious of suffering such dangerous Precedents when they see how fond Governors are of seizing the Advantage for diminishing our Privileges.
" We agree with the Governor that what we have said as to this offer of Lands to the Westward will not hinder unprejudiced men from seeing it in its true light; we think our remarks have rather contributed to that end and even assisted those that might before be prejudiced, But are at a loss to conceive how either the preju- diced or unprejudiced cou'd be 'convinced' the offer was 'made under a proper authority,' when neither of the Governor's Com- missions, not even that which he calls 'the Foundation of Pro- perty,' gave him such authority, and he is now reduced to the ne- cessity of dropping them and recurring to private Instructions VOL. VI .- 40.
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never mentioned before, of which none can judge till he shall think fit to produce them. But all may judge how well he has acquitted himself of the imputations of attempting to impose on the publick by introducing the Commission of property as an authority for the offer, so we shall spare the Governor on that Head and press it no farther.
" If the Governor had given himself the trouble of looking into Viner, under the Title we mentioned, he might there have found the Case abriged referred to. We, it seems, not being Lawyers quoted improperly, but he, tho' a Lawyer, refers us to Lord Coke without Page, Case, or Volume, and to 'other Writers of Note & authority in the Law' without so much as naming their names, So that we are utterly at a Loss where to find the Law part of his Messages ; but the politicks and Calumny we can easily trace to their fountain Head, though he does not vouchsafe to quote it at all. The perfect shameness of Sentiment and even of Expression are sufficient to show that they are all drawn from a late famous Libel entituled ' A brief state of the Province of Pennsylvania,' an author of whom, if we do not say as the Governor says of Viner, that he has no authority, yet we may say that his authority diminishes daily the more we see of his works.
" The Governor is pleased to say That ' the common security of the people requires that they should not be taxed but by the voice of the whole Legislature,' and that 'we might as well set up a Democracy at once, as claim an exclusive right to the Disposition of publick Money.' To this we beg leave to answer, that though we are not so absurd as to design a Democracy, of which the Gov- ernor is pleased to accuse us, yet in this particular all our late at- tempts to raise money for the common security of the people being obstructed and defeated by the Governor's having a voice in that matter, would rather induce us to think that his having such a voice is not best for their Security, and such a conduct in a Gover- nor appears to us the most likely thing in the World to make peo- ple incline to a Democracy who would otherwise never have dreamt of it.
" But the Governor is pleased to tell us that our Claim of a natural exclusive Right to the Disposition of publick Money, because it is the Peoples, 'is against Reason, the Nature of an Eng- lish Government, and the usage of this Province.' He has, how- ever, never produced that Reason to us, & we still think that as every man has, so every body of men have a natural right to the disposition of their own Money, by themselves or their Representa- tives, and that the Proprietary's Claim of a Voice in the Disposition of Money to which he will contribute no part, is a claim contrary to Reason. The wisdom of the Crown has thought fit to allow differ- ent Constitutions to different Colonies suitable to their different Circumstances, and as they have been long settled and established
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we apprehend that if the Governor could have power to unsettle them all and make in every one such changes as would be necessary to reduce them to a Conformity with his Idea of an 'English Government,' the reformation would be productive of more incon- venience than advantage. The general ' Usage of this Province' in the Disposition of Publick Money was ever what it now is, and as the Province has flourished with it and no inconvenience has attended it, we hope it will still continue. Particular Laws may in a very few Instances have given the Disposition of particular sums to the Governor or Commissioners for particular Services, but a few such Instances do not make an usage, and the Governor must in that point have been greatly misinformed.
"It is agreed that in the Concessions mentioned by the Gover- nor the Proprietary reserved in every hundred thousand acres Ten to himself, but then (to make the Governor's 'plain fact' a little plainer) he was to have it by Lot and not by Choice; the quantity so reserved was to lie but in one place, and he was bound to plant or man it within three years after it was set out and surveyed, 'or else (by the next Concession) it was lawful for new comers to settle thereupon and he go higher up for his share.' This might induce him not to take up more than he could conveniently settle, but can give his Successors no right to pick here and there the best vacant pieces among the Settlements, excluding other Rights, nor to keep the Land Office shut, as was done after the second mentioned pur- chase till they had garbled the best Tracts for themselves and Dependants, and left little besides Rocks and barren Mountains for the rest of the people.
" The third and last purchase being made but the last Year, and the Land mostly exposed to, or as the Governor has often informed us, in the hands of the Enemy, we are surprized to hear that 'great numbers of People are seated on it to their entire satisfaction,' and more so that the Proprietaries Manors and appropriated Tracts are mostly settled by persons that pay their shares of all Taxes. If this be so we must own ourselves as much unacquainted with the state of his Lands as we are with the state and management of the Land Office, which of late indeed is pretty much a Mystery. That the Proprietaries are intitled to the character of the best Land- lords we can by no means presume to say with the Governor, since his Majesty's Lands are granted without purchase Money on half the Quit-Rent, and the Quit-Rents are applied to the support of Government and defence of the Country. We cannot, therefore, but be of opinion that the King is a much better Landlord.
" If the Governor would please to consider that it does not fall to the share of perhaps one man in Five hundred to be an Assessor during his whole Life, and that the chance of being favoured or not by a succeeding assessor as he himself shall behave in that office, is proportionably small, and that the very little which can
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possibly be saved in his part of the Tax, by unjustly enhancing that of the Proprietaries, is a matter next to nothing; the Gov- ernor certainly cannot have so ill an opinion of mankind as to believe these Temptations can be sufficient to induce a commonly honest man to forswear himself; and assessors are seldom men of the meanest characters for Integrity. But surely a security that all the Peers in Britain think sufficient with regard to the equity of Taxation on their Estates might be confided in by our Proprietaries, unless the people here are much more depraved than we can possi- bly conceive them to be.
"Our Argument that if all the Estates in Britain and her Colo- nies now bear or must bear a Tax to free the Proprietary Estate from Encroachments, that Estate itself ought not to be exempted, the Governor calls 'an invidious and ungrateful insinuation,' and asks, 'is there nothing but this at stake ? Is it for a tract of unsettled Country, belonging to the Proprietaries of this Province, that the eyes of all Europe are turned upon this Continent, and such mighty Preparations making both by Sea and Land? Or, Gentlemen, can you think that if the Enemy are suffered to keep up Forti- fications in any private Estate whatsoever within the Limits of this Province, you could preserve your Estates or the English Nation its Diminions ? What end then can such insinuations serve but to cool the Ardor of his Majesty's good subjects in recovering the Country unjustly taken from them, as if they were contending for a thing of no consequence, which is but too much the opinion of many amongst us, raised and confirmed no Doubt by your strange conduct.' Had we asserted that the Proprietary Es- tate only was in danger, and argued thence that the Estate alone ought, therefore, to pay for its recovery or security, all this strain of the Governor's eloquence might then have been very just and proper. But, may it please the Governor, we did think there was something else at stake. We thought other estates in danger, and therefore offered a very large sum as our share of the Expence in the Bill for granting Fifty thousand pounds to the King's use. But we thought the Proprietary Estate at least as much in danger as any other Estate, and therefore imagined it ought to pay its pro- portion towards the expence of its own security. The Governor, it seems, thinks otherwise, and because other Estates are likewise in Danger the Proprietary Estate ought to be exempted, and unless we will agree to recover and defend that Gratis, we should not be permitted to raise money for the defence of our own Estates, our neighbours, or our Sovereign's Dominions. This is our present situation, and we cannot help it, for the Proprietary Instructions are, it seems, as unalterable as the Laws of the Medes and Persians. But let it be known to them and to all it is not our Insinuation, invidious as it may seem to the Governor & ungrateful to his Ears, that cools the ardor of his Majestie's good Subjects; but if any thing cools that ardor it must be the Fact insinuated, the Proprie-
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taries claiming that invidious and odious Distinction of being ex- empted from the common Burthens of their Fellow-Subjects. If there be any who think the nation is contending for a thing of no consequence it must be of those who refuse to contribute their share, and not we who offer largely; and that opinion in others, if such an opinion there be, must be raised and confirmed by the Governor and Proprietaries strange Conduct,, and not by ours.
" The Governor says we ' lay to his Charge a pretended Estimate (of the Expence of cutting the Roads) of which he is totally ig- norant, having never seen nor heard of one.' Is it possible that the Governor can have forgotten it? He told us in his Message of the Eighteenth of March that he had 'appointed Commis- sioners to reconnoitre the Country, mark out where such roads might most conveniently be made, and make report to him of their proceedings, with an Estimate of the Expences that would attend the opening and clearing them.' On the application of the Gov- ernor in that Message, the House sent up a Bill giving twenty-five thousand pounds to the King's use, wherein among other things the clearing of roads for the King's Service was provided for. But, may it please the Governor, did the Commissioners never comply with their Instructions and make that Estimate? Or if they made it, did the Governor never lay it before the House ? 'Tis true we have not that Estimate now in our possession; it was returned again to the Governor, but we all remember the sum, and that it was Eight hundred pounds. If it was indeed as the Governor says it might possibly be, 'only some men's private opinion,' yet it was an Estimate, and sent to us by the Governor, whether made by the commissioners or by others we have not said (tho' we think it was by the Commissioners), nor is it material. However, we have remaining in the House a subsequent Letter from one of the Com- missioners to the Sccretary, dated May the third, which says, 'We sent you a Draught of the Road, both to the Waters of the Yohio- gani and to the Camp, with all the principal places marked that occurred to us, with the amount of the charges of laying out both, and an Estimate of the expence of opening and bridging the Road to the Yohiogani from the Tuscarora Mountain. That to the Camp will not cost so much in proportion to its Length because it is less hilly, but we expect amendments upon it so as to come into the other near the top of sideling hill and avoid two crossings of Juniata, and also to cut off several miles between the Devil's hole and the camp. Both roads will leave little of Fifteen hundred pounds, for it is impossible to tell what expence unexpected occurrences will arise to. By this it appears that an estimate was made by the Commissioners, and that the Gov- ernor 'cither saw or heard of it' seems probable, since he sent down this very Letter to the House; at least he must have heard of the second Estimate contained in this Letter, 'that both Roads would leave little of Fifteen hundred pounds.' The House, how-
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ever, voted still to bear the Expences of cutting both Roads, though the first sum was nearly doubled, and the refusal of their Bill by the Governor would make it more difficult to be complied with. We have also in our hands another Letter from the same Commis- sioner, dated fifteen days after the former, wherein, after more Experience in the work, he makes a third Estimate, judging that the 'Expence of opening both Roads will be little under Two thousand pounds.' This Estimate the Governor must surely have 'seen or heard of, since the Letter is to himself, and by him laid before us. After all these Estimates, gradually rising from Eight hundred to Two thousand pounds, the Design of opening one of the Roads was dropt, the intended Breadth of the other was reduced one- third, its intended length shortened, and even that shorter extent never compleated, and yet though it was supposed we had paid near one thousand pounds in Money and Provisions, We were given to understand that Five thousand pounds more was wanted. Had we not reason to be surprized at this, and to suspect some extravagance in the management ?
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