USA > Pennsylvania > Pennsylvania, colonial and federal : a history, 1608-1903, Volume One > Part 36
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unimproved lots in Philadelphia or in towns or adjoining im- proved lands, and another amendment exempting the Proprietary estates, inasmuch as there was no provision for taxing them ex- cept by the regular assessors, whereas the Proprietaries insisted upon commissioners named in the act. Nevertheless he informed the Assembly that the Proprietaries were ready to pay taxes on their quit rents and appropriated tracts if on examination the 5,000l. which they had given fell short of their share of past and future taxation. . The House adhered to its bill, so the Lieutenant- Governor rejected it, and on April 5 a new bill for the purpose was brought to him. This he rejected because commissioners were not named to settle the taxes on the Proprietary estates. When the Assembly had announced adherence to this bill, Denny acquainted General Amherst, who had arrived in Philadelphia. with the state of the case. The General sent for Norris, the Speaker, and some of the members, and used his best endeavors to have a bill passed like those of preceding years, but in vain. Fi- nally he sent them word that he would withdraw the King's forces if the same number of provincial troops as in the past year were not raised. The Assembly merely used this in a message to Denny as an argument why he should yield. The councillors urged him not to, and pointed out that the bill was worse than any others : it subjected the Proprietary estates to all taxes from which they had been exempted in former acts, making them pay in one year the taxes for four years, and might result in the sale of the estates by the commissioners and assessors who were chosen in this time of popular fury against the Proprietaries. But Gen- eral Amherst, following the example of the Earl of Loudoun, asked Denny to waive the Proprietary instructions, promising to explain the necessity to the King's ministers. So on April 17 the supply bill was passed by Denny into a law, and the raising of troops required for garrisoning the frontier forts or joining the operations in the offensive was secured. The Assembly tried to have two laws made, one designed against the Proprietaries. being
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John Penn
Member Provincial Council, 1753; commission- er to the Albany Congress, 1754; lieutenant- governor, 1763-1771, and 1771-1776: arrested by order of Continental Congress. 1777, and re- leased 1778; died in Bucks county, 1795
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The Expulsion of the French
for the recording of warrants and surveys, and rendering real estate more secure, and the other designed particularly, it was sup- posed, against the college at Philadelphia, of which the son-in-law of William Moore of Chester county, Rev. William Smith, D. D., from Scotland, was president, or provost, this law being for the more effectual suppression of lotteries and plays. This college, the parent of the University of Pennsylvania, was under the con- trol of the friends of the Proprietaries, and had been made a Latin school, somewhat in opposition to the plan of Dr. Franklin, who was, after all, its founder. Of late the chief support had come from lotteries. That means of raising money had been used for various purposes, although prohibited by a former law, which imposed a fine of Tool., half going to the Governor, who had been in the habit of remitting his half when a public purpose was to be subserved. The councillors deeming the prohibition of plays an unreasonable restraint upon innocent diversions, fortified their opinion by recalling that in Queen Anne's time a law of Pennsyl- vania of such import had been repealed by the Queen. The Lieutenant-Governor accordingly proposed amendments to these projects : but having once broken through his instructions, under the guarantee of General Amherst, afterwards when the Assembly on June 10 sent him an act for re-emitting the bills of credit of the province theretofore re-emitted on loan and for striking the further sum of 36,650l. to enable the trustees to send 50,000l. to Colonel John Hunter, agent for the contractors, as a loan, the Lieutenant-Governor disregarded the unanimous advice against more paper money from his Council, Strettell, Peters, Cadwalader, Turner, and Chew, and told them that the Proprietaries' interest must not stand in competition with the operations of the cam- paign, and asked the Assembly to add 25,000l. to the loan to Hunter, and allow him more time, and to insert the usual allow- ance to the Proprietaries for the exchange on their quit rents due in sterling money. The only amendment the Assembly made was to allow Hunter more time. Stanwix asked him to pass the bill,
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being anxious to have the contractors paid. Rev. Richard Peters explained to Stanwix the injustice it would work to the Proprie- taries, and Stanwix expressed great concern at the Assembly's at- titude, some of the members having told him plainly that. this probably being the last campaign, they would never again have such an opportunity of obtaining what they thought just against the Proprietaries, and preserving the powers and privileges to which they were entitled, and of which the Proprietaries wished to deprive them. Stanwix told Peters that he would set this mat- ter in its true light before the King's ministers, that these acts of injustice might not be confirmed. On June 18, Denny told his Council, of whom there were then present the aforesaid five and also Shoemaker and Lardner, that he had heard much from them about the Proprietaries, but there had been a remarkable silence as to the King's letters ; he considered himself laid under express command to forward the general service; and loyalty and obe- dience was due to the King as well as a regard to the Proprietaries. The councillors were shocked by a charge of disloyalty, repelled it, and said that they had heard and believed that Denny would pass the bill not so much from regard for the King as for other reasons. Then Chew read a protest which had been drawn up before the meeting, upon the councillors hearing that there had been an agreement between Denny and certain members of the Assembly to secure his assent to the bill. The protest set forth the great quantity of paper money afloat, the want of a suspend- ing clause until the King's assent be obtained, the power of the Assembly over the interest from the loans, etc. In the afternoon Denny sent word to the Assembly that he withdrew his amend- ments, and would pass the bill. Denny also passed the bill for suppressing lotteries and plays, and the House voted to him 1,000 !. When the Assembly had made some amendments to the bill for recording warrants and surveys, although his councillors urged him to wait for a proper bill on the subject, he passed it, and re- ceived a second grant of 1,000l. The Assembly also by vote
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The Expulsion of the French
promised to indemnify Denny from any loss which he might sus- tain from the prosecution by the Proprietaries of his bond.
While General Stanwix, proceeding to Bedford, was having trouble in securing the necessary horses and wagons for his march to the westward, the retreat of the French from Ticonderoga and Crown Point, their surrender of Niagara after it had been stormed by the British, and the rout of 1,200 French from Detroit, Ven- ango, and Presque Isle coming to the relief of Niagara, and the adhesion of the Indians to the peace, brought about the evacuation and destruction of the French forts in Pennsylvania : Venango, Le Boeuf, and Presque Isle. This was made permanent by the capture of Quebec and the building of a more substantial fort at Pittsburgh.
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CHAPTED XVII.
THE MEN OF THE FRONTIER
F ROM Holme's map of the first purchases, Davis's History of Bucks County, and Smith's History of Delaware County, if not from what we have said in the preceding chapters, the reader can gather that down to the death of William Penn all of what is now Bucks beyond Newtown, all of Mont- gomery beyond Norristown, and all of what is now Chester would have been called the frontier. After or contemporary with the religious communities of which the works of Sachse have given details, and which made settlements along the northern side of the Schuylkill and at Ephrata, came new emigrants from Wales, mostly Baptists, to the northern end of the colony. The Quakers spread little except from the increase of families. The Scotcli- Irish soon after Penn's death led the way to the Susquehanna.
James Logan, secretary, receiver-general and surveyor-general previous to the mortgage of 1708, was one of the attorneys for the mortgagees and the most active trustee for the sale of the Pennsylvania lands appointed in Penn's will. Sir William Keith made some effort to take the control of this land business out of Logan's hands. Keith's interference, althought it was not legal, advanced the outposts of the cavalry in three ways, viz., the invitation to the Germans to settle at Tulpehocken, of which we have spoken ; the procuring of a survey, by virtue of an old right which he had bought, of a tract on the western bank of the Susquehanna. where he established a plantation called Newberry,
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after his wife's maiden name; and the establishment of a manor of 70,000 acres for Springett Penn and called Springettsbury adjoin- ing Newberry on the south (in York county). Any right which Springett Penn took by this was probably as trustee for the Pro- prietaries, and assigned to them by his brother William's release. Many years afterwards the manor was resurveyed with different dimensions. The enormous immigration of Germans induced the Anglo-Saxon majority in the Assembly in 1729 to impose a pro- tective tariff, not on goods, but on persons, of so much a head. In 1730, it is said, there were about 15,000 adherents of the Ger- man Reformed confession in Pennsylvania. Thomas Penn at- tempted to make sales, once by a lottery scheme, at the very edge of the Indian purchases on the Delaware.
As the Moravians entered the Indian country with gospel work as one of their chief purposes, they are not included by us with the belligerent people at the foot of the Blue Mountains when we speak of frontiersmen, although they were the northernmost settlers at the time of the arrival of Denny.
The German Lutherans had begun to congregate before 1743, when the Rev. Henry Melchior Mühlenberg established the Augustus church at Trappe (Montgomery county). Not long afterwards he organized a Lutheran synod. He married a daugh- ter of Conrad Weiser. We have seen how the frontiers receded during the French and Indian war, and the white man's country may be said not to have extended beyond the present Franklin and Cumberland and the southern half of the present Dauphin, Lebanon, and Berks counties at the time at which the last chapter closes. Beyond were a few forts, Pitt and Augusta being the most important. The land for miles within this border was oc- cupied by detached settlements of Germans and Scotch-Irish. The change of the aforesaid Muhlenberg's son from preacher to gen- eral in the pulpit, which was one of the striking incidents of the Revolution, had been often less dramatically paralleled among the descendants of the Covenanters in this earlier war. The
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statues of John Peter Gabriel Mühlenberg and Robert Fulton, al- though one took up arms in Virginia, and the other started a steam boat in New York, represent the two dominant elements of the interior population of the State which presented the statues
Forty Fort
Situated near Wilkes-Barre, 100 feet from the river; erected 1770; rebuilt in 1777. Engraved for this work from a print in Wyoming Histor- ical and Geological Society
: to the Capitol at Washington. These elements were separated ecclesiastically from the element which bore sway in the older settlement, where William Allen, the only holder of important office, was a Presbyterian. Since the Swedes element had be- come insignificant, political power was shared between the Quakers and the adherents of the Church of England. Then also,
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while Allen was the richest inhabitant of Pennsylvania, the other rich men were Quakers or Churchmen. One fact about social conditions in Colonial Pennsylvania must be noted. Among the first purchases while the Founder was in England there had been some tracts of 5,000 acres, and Dr. Nicholas Moore and the Grow- dons had located theirs respectively in one place; and the Free Society of Traders, of which Moore was president, had larger tracts in several places, and some right to exercise baronial juris- diction, its so-called manor in Chester county becoming many years later the property of Nathaniel Newlin : but the abrogation from the first of the law of primogeniture, the application of a decedent's land to the payment of debts, and the temptation to sell by the rapid demand for smaller quantities, caused these tracts to be subdivided, and when various members of the Penn family aside from the Proprietaries themselves received large quantities of land and sold them to single purchasers, the latter, buying on speculation, soon sold off pieces. Thus the real estate in any given locality owned by a resident there, aside from the Proprietaries themselves, amounted at the most to large farms held in fee. There were no great estates occupied by a landed gentry remote from the chief city, as in Virginia and New York. The rich men of Penn- sylvania and those who deemed themselves its aristocracy were nearly all merchants or merchants' sons. Growdon of Bucks county and William Logan of Philadelphia county were the only members of the Council not residents of Philadelphia, unless we count Hamilton, who lived just beyond Vine street. We have seen that the councillors were the representatives of the Proprie- taries. Originally all being members of the Society of Friends, it was a long time the policy that an equal number should be taken from that Society and the Church of England, but latterly most of the ostensible Friends were of the variety who believed in de- fensive war, and Logan, Shoemaker, and to some extent Grow- don were the only ones in sympathy with the mass of attendants at Meeting. In the Assembly, however, after the excitement
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of the war had subsided, Quakers began to resume control. Among them was Shoemaker's son-in-law, Edward Penington, descended from a half brother of William Penn's first wife; so that this representative of the people was a relative of the elder line of Penns. A leading spirit of the Assembly after Isaac Norris the Speaker, and in the absence of Benjamin Franklin, who, although continuously re-elected until 1764, was now agent in London, was Growdon's son-in-law, Joseph Galloway, a law- yer of a Quaker family in Maryland.
Among the other measures of the Assembly to which the ad- mirers of Franklin and the advocates of popular rights against the Proprietaries' interest induced Denny to consent, were three : one respecting the courts of judicature, one for the relief of the heirs, devisees, and assigns of persons born out of the King's allegiance who had been owners of lands within the Province, and died unnaturalized, and the third for appointing an agent to re- ceive Pennsylvania's share of £200,000 granted by Parliament to the colonies in return for part of the war expenses. The first of these acts transferred the business of the Orphans' Court to the county courts, but this was not what affected the Proprietaries. The act changed the tenure of judges from during the good pleas- ure of the Governors, in whom the appointment was vested, to during good behavior, as in England, the reason for the act, of course, being to secure the independence of the judiciary, an ar- gument against it before the Privy Council being that by the in- creased wealth of the Province from time to time better salaries could be afforded and better talent secured. The act for the re- lief of the heirs, etc., of unnaturalized persons took away the Pro- prietaries' right to the decedent's land by escheat. It was said that this right had not been rigorously exercised, but that it had been the practice to make a new grant to those who would have taken had the decedent been naturalized. These two acts being to advance the equality of men before the law, the third act was not relished because the money was to go from the British treas-
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Men of the Frontier
ury to the Bank of England through the hands of the great philos- opher of equality, Benjamin Franklin.
Even before Denny at Amherst's request broke through the instructions from the Proprietaries, they began looking out for a new Lieutenant-Governor, but kept this a secret from Franklin, so that Denny should not know of it until his successor should be ready to embark. Before Franklin's letter of June 10, 1758, Mr. Graves of the Temple had the refusal of the office, with the Penn's town-house and country-house rent free, and their guarantee of £900 sterling per annum. They told him that he could live easily on £500, keeping a coach, etc., and referred him to Hamilton, who said that he could; but Robert Hunter Morris said that he could not. Therefore inquiries were made of Franklin, through a friend, and Graves declined. Evidently Denny had learned that his official days were numbered, before he made his peace with the Assembly. But his office was a long time going begging. James Hamilton being in England, the reappointment of him was thought of. The matter being delayed, he wrote a short note dated London, April 4, to the effect, that, as every one knew he had not solicited it, he was not disposed to recede from the terms on which he had agreed to take it, viz. : that he be not restrained from assenting to any reasonable bill for taxing the Proprietary estates in common with all the other estates in the province; for in his opinion it was no more than just. Finally the commission was issued to Hamilton, bearing date July 19, 1759. He took the oath before King George II and the Privy Council at White- hall August 10, 1759; and on November 17 arrived in Philadel- phia. The Penns instructed him, first, as was natural from large property holders, to make a final effort by the most prudent means to prevent the Assembly from including any part of the Proprie- tary estate in any tax raised by it; but, secondly, if a tax on this estate at all were necessary, to levy it on the quit-rents, the tenants paying the tax, and deducting it from the rent; and to make proper arrangements for justly assessing other people's estates ;
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and on no account to authorize the sale of Proprietary lands for taxes. The following year, a bill was presented for raising 100,- oool. The Assembly could not be induced to allow the appoint- ment of commissioners to whom the Proprietaries might appeal in a case of over-assessment, although Hamilton repeated the old argument that the county assessors, to whom alone the Assembly would commit the subject, did not represent the Proprietaries. who had no voice in their appointment, but only the inhabitants who elected them. Hamilton added that nothing was further from his thoughts than to desire an exemption of the Proprietary estates : "All I contend for is that they may be put upon an equal foot with others." The Assembly adhered to the bill, and Ham- ilton, finding the money was necessary, gave his assent under protest.
A law was made prohibiting any person or persons singly or in companies from hunting, chasing, or following any deer, wild beast, wild fowl, or game, or setting traps for beaver or other beasts outside of the limits of the lands purchased by the Pro- prietaries from the Indians : and assurances were sent to a great council of western Indians that no settlements should be made west of the Alleghanies.
When the various acts assented to by Denny came before the King in Council, the Proprietaries petitioned against eleven of them, and hired the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General of England to argue the matter before the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations. The agents of the Assembly, Franklin and Rob- ert Charles, son-in-law of Lieutenant-Governor Patrick Gordon, secured Messrs. De Grey and Jackson as counsel, these raising two points : first, that the King's right to repeal laws passed by the Governor and Assembly was limited to such as the King deemed inconsistent with his sovereignty or prerogative or the faith and allegiance due by the Proprietaries or people ; and, sec- ond, that the Proprietaries were excluded by the consent given by their Lieutenant-Governor to the laws from complaining to the .
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Men of the Frontier
King and obtaining relief by the exercise of any discretion which he might have. The five placemen serving as Commissioners re- ported in favor of the wider view of the King's prerogative: their argument was that as the charter of Charles II said that the laws were to be consonant to reason and as far as convenient agreeable to the laws of England, it must be presumed that the Crown, which had reserved the lesser right of judgment upon
Stewart's Block House
Situated in the Wyoming Valley, near the Sus- quehanna river; built by Captain Lazarus Stew- art in 1771. Reproduced by courtesy of the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society
appeal, had reserved the greater right of legislation, which, more- over, was independent of any charter. Very properly, it seems to us, they did not allow the Proprietaries to be estopped from complaining of the act of their deputy ; the Crown, it was argued, had the right to any information from Proprietaries and people, and the circumstances under which the deputy had assented made it particularly hard to allow him to shut them off from relief. On the subject of taxing the Proprietary estates other than rents, which the Proprietaries agreed should be taxed, the Commission- ers reported that neither the unlocated waste land nor the located
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unimproved land was a proper subject for taxation, and the method of levying it by this act, leaving the assessment absolutely in the hands of assessors in whose appointment the Proprietaries had no voice, was unfair, and the provision for sale in case of non- payment, was unwarrantable, such a thing being unheard of in England. The encroachment upon the executive power by the Assembly in insisting upon the nomination of the officers pro- vided for by the act was very exceptionable, and the making of paper money a legal tender for quit rents due in sterling was un- just. The Commissioners urged the King to maintain the pre- rogative even when held by subjects like the Proprietaries, and even when they had been remiss in protecting it, and particularly in Pennsylvania, where there was no upper house in the legis- lature. The Commissioners reported in favor of the repeal of the aforesaid supply bill, of the act for re-emitting bills of credit and loaning to John Hunter, of the act supplemental to the same, of the act for recording warrants and surveys, of the act against lotteries and plays, of the courts of judicature act, and of the act for relief of heirs, etc., of unnaturalized decedents. The act for appointing the agent to receive the money, however, they recom- mended for approval; so Franklin scored a personal triumph. While this report was before the Committee of the Privy Council for Plantation Affairs, the Proprietaries, by a compromise ar- ranged by Lord Mansfield, promised for the sake of peace to in- struct their Lieutenant-Governor to assent to a bill for paying off the 100,000l. authorized by the supply bill in the form of said bill amended as the Lords declared to be necessary ; that is to say that, first, the real estate to be taxed be defined so as not to include the Proprietaries' unsurveyed waste lands ; secondly, their located but uncultivated lands be assessed not higher than the lowest rate at which any located uncultivated lands of the inhabitants should be assessed; thirdly, all lands of the Proprietaries within boroughs and towns be deemed located uncultivated lands and not rated as lots; fourthly, the acting Governor's consent be necessary to -
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every issue and application of the bills of credit raised by the act ; fifthly, Provincial commissioners be named to hear and determine appeals; and sixthly, the payment of rents to the Proprietaries be made according to the terms of the grants. The agents of the province then engaged that if the present act were not repealed the Assembly would pass a bill to amend it according to these six requirements. Upon this agreement, the King allowed the act to stand. When pressed to carry out the agreement, the Assem- bly made an examination of the assessors' books, and told the Governor that the unsurveyed waste land had not been, and was never intended to be, assessed ; that the located uncultivated lands had not been assessed higher than the inhabitants' lands under like circumstances; that only in a few instances had the lots in boroughs and towns been assessed, and these as low as the lots sold; that it was never the intention to contravene the stipulations for quit rents, and that as the law would soon expire by limitation they hoped the Governor would lay the state of the matter before his superiors, and that the act passed in 1760 would receive the Royal approbation. General Amherst asked for the raising of 300 soldiers by the Province; the Assembly, after pointing out that it had granted upwards of 500,000l. since the commencement of the war, and that compliance with the proposed alterations and amendments in regard to taxing the Proprietary estates, "must be esteemed a high breach of trust by the people," then, on April 18, 1761, passed a bill for granting 30,000l. in the usual mode of bills of credit to be redeemed by taxation, and coupled this with provision for superintendence by the Assembly of the ex- penditure, and also making the bills of credit a legal tender for quit rents. Hamilton begged that the money sufficient for rais- ing the troops be appropriated from what was already in the hands of the agents in England, so as to avoid controversy.
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