The fourth particular is, "That the governor's consent and approbation be made necessary to every issue and application of the money, to be raised by virtue of such act." The assembly intended this, and thought they had done it in the act. The words of the clause being, "That [the commissioners named] or the major part of them, or of the survivors of them, with the consent or approbation of the governor or commander in chief of this province for the time being, shall order and appoint the disposition of the monies arising by virtue of this act, for and towards paying and clothing two thousand seven hundred effective men," &c. It was understood here, that as the power of disposing was expressly to be with the consent and approbation of the governor, the commissioners had no power to dispose of the money without that approbation: but their lordships, jealous (as their station requires) of this prerogative of the crown, and being better acquainted with the force and weakness of law expression, did not think the clause explicit enough, unless the words, "and not otherwise," were added, or some other words equivalent. This particular, therefore, was no more than another requisition of greater clearness and precision; and by no means a foundation for the charge of fundamentally wrong and unjust.
The fifth particular was, "That provincial commissioners be named, to hear and determine appeals, brought on the part of the inhabitants, as well as the proprietaries." There was already subsisting a provision for the appointment of county commissioners of appeal; by whom the act might be, and actually has been (as we shall presently show) justly and impartially executed with regard to the proprietaries; but provincial commissioners appointed in the act it was thought might be of use, in regulating and equalizing the modes of assessment of different counties, where they were unequal; and by affording a second appeal, tend more to the satisfaction both of the proprietaries and the people.—This particular was therefore a mere proposed improvement of the act, which could not be, and was not, in this respect, denominated fundamentally wrong and unjust.
We have now gone through five of the six proposed amendments, without discovering any thing on which that censure could be founded; but the sixth remains; which points at a part of the act wherein we must candidly acknowledge there is something, that, in their lordships' view of it, must justify their judgment. The words of the sixth article are, "That the payments by the tenants to the proprietaries of their rents, shall be according to the terms of their respective grants, as if such act had never been passed." This relates to that clause of the act by which the paper-money was made a legal tender in "discharge of all manner of debts, rents, sum and sums of money whatsoever, &c. at the rates ascertained in the act of parliament made in the sixth of Queen Anne." From the great injustice frequently done to creditors, and complained of from the colonies, by the vast depreciation of paper bills, it was become a general fixed principle with the ministry, that such bills (whose value, though fixed in the act, could not be kept fixed by the act) ought not to be made a legal tender in any colony at those rates. The parliament had before passed an act, to take that tender away in the four New England colonies, and have since made the act general. This was what their lordships would therefore have proposed for the amendment. But it being represented, That the chief support of the credit of the bills was the legal tender; and that without it they would become of no value, it was allowed generally to remain; with an exception to the proprietaries' rents, where[62] there was a special contract for payment in another coin. It cannot be denied but that this was doing justice to the proprietaries; and that, had the requisition been in favour of all other creditors also, the justice had been equal, as being general. We do not therefore presume to impeach their lordships' judgment, that the act, as it enforced the acceptance of bills for money at a value which they had only nominally, and not really, was in that respect fundamentally wrong and unjust. And yet we believe the reader will not think the assembly so much to blame, when he considers, that the making paper-bills a legal tender had been the universal mode in America for more than threescore years; that there was scarce a colony that had not practised that mode more or less; that it had always been thought absolutely necessary, in order to give the bills a credit, and thereby obtain from them the uses of money; that the inconveniences were therefore submitted to, for the sake of the greater conveniences; that acts innumerable of the like kind had been approved by the crown; and that if the assembly made the bills a legal tender at those rates to the proprietaries, they made them also a legal tender to themselves and all their constituents, many of whom might suffer in their rents, &c. as much in proportion to their estates as the proprietaries. But if he cannot, on these considerations, quite excuse the assembly, what will he think of those honourable proprietaries, who, when paper-money was issued in their colony, for the common defence of their vast estates, with those of the people, and who must therefore reap at least equal advantages from those bills with the people, could nevertheless wish to be exempted from their share of the unavoidable disadvantages. Is there upon earth a man besides, with any conception of what is honest, with any notion of honour, with the least tincture in his veins of the gentleman, but would have blushed at the thought; but would have rejected with disdain such undue preference, if it had been offered him? Much less would he have struggled for it, moved heaven and earth to obtain it, resolved to ruin thousands of his tenants by a repeal of the act, rather than miss of it[63]; and enforce it afterwards by an audaciously wicked instruction; forbidding aids to his king, and exposing the province to destruction, unless it was complied with. And yet,—These are honourable men[64].
Here then we have a full view of the assembly's injustice; about which there has been so much insolent triumph! But let the proprietaries and their discreet deputies hereafter recollect and remember, that the same august tribunal, which censured some of the modes and circumstances of that act, did at the same time establish and confirm the grand principle of the act, viz. "That the proprietary estate ought, with other estates, to be taxed:" and thereby did in effect determine and pronounce, that the opposition so long made in various shapes to that just principle, by the proprietaries, was fundamentally wrong and unjust. An injustice they were not, like the assembly, under any necessity of committing for the public good, or any other necessity but what was imposed on them by those base passions, that act the tyrant in bad minds; their selfishness, their pride, and their avarice.
I have frequently mentioned the equitable intentions of the house in those parts of the act, that were supposed obscure, and how they were understood here. A clear proof thereof is found, as I have already said, in the actual execution of the act; in the execution of it before the contest about it in England; and therefore before their lordships' objections to it had a being. When the report came over, and was laid before the house, one year's tax had been levied: and the assembly, conscious that no injustice had been intended to the proprietaries, and willing to rectify it if any should appear, appointed a committee of members from the several counties to examine into the state of the proprietaries' taxes through the province, and nominated on that committee a gentleman of known attachment to the proprietaries, and their chief justice, Mr. Allen; to the end that the strictest inquiry might be made. Their report was as follows: "We, the committee appointed to inquire into, and consider the state of the proprietary taxation through the several counties, and report the same to the house, have, in pursuance of the said appointment, carefully examined the returns of property, and compared them with the respective assessments thereon made through the whole province; and find, first, That no part of the unsurveyed waste lands belonging to the proprietaries have, in any instance, been included in the estates taxed. Secondly, That some of the located uncultivated lands belonging to the proprietaries in several counties remain unassessed; and are not in any county assessed higher, than the lands under like circumstances belonging to the inhabitants. Thirdly, That all lands; not granted by the proprietaries, within boroughs and towns, remain untaxed; excepting in a few instances, and in those they are rated as low, as the lands which are granted in the said boroughs and towns. The whole of the proprietary tax of eighteen pence in the pound amounts to 566l. 4s. 10d. And the sum of the tax on the inhabitants for the same year amounts, through the several counties, to 27,103l. 12s. 8d. And it is the opinion of your committee, that there has not been any injustice done to the proprietaries, or attempts made to rate or assess any part of their estates higher than the estates of the like kind belonging to the inhabitants are rated and assessed; but, on the contrary, we find that their estates are rated, in many instances, below others.
| Thomas Leech, | George Ashbridge, |
| Joseph Fox, | Emanuel Carpenter, |
| Samuel Rhoads, | John Blackburn, |
| Abraham Chapman, | William Allen." |
The house communicated this report to governor Hamilton, when he afterwards pressed them to make the stipulated act of amendment; acquainting him at the same time, that as in the execution of the act no injustice had hitherto been done to the proprietary, so, by a yearly inspection of the assessments, they would take care that none should be done him; for that if any should appear, or the governor could at any time point out to them any that had been done, they would immediately rectify it; and therefore, as the act was shortly to expire, they did not think the amendments necessary. Thus that matter ended during that administration.
And had his successor, governor Penn, permitted it still to sleep, we are of opinion it had been more to the honour of the family, and of his own discretion. But he was pleased to found upon it a claim manifestly unjust, and which he was totally destitute of reason to support. A claim, that the proprietaries best and most valuable located uncultivated lands, should be taxed no higher than the worst and least valuable of those belonging to the inhabitants: to enforce which, as he thought the words of one of the stipulations seemed to give some countenance to it, he insisted on using those very words as sacred; from which he could "neither in decency or in duty," deviate; though he had agreed to deviate from words [in] the same report, and therefore equally sacred in every other instance. A conduct which will (as the prefacer says in governor Denny's case) for ever disgrace the annals of his administration[65]. Never did any administration open with a more promising prospect [than this of governor Penn]. He assured the people, in his first speeches, of the proprietaries' paternal regard for them, and their sincere disposition to do every thing that might promote their happiness. As the proprietaries had been pleased to appoint a son of the family to the government, it was thought not unlikely, that there might be something in these professions; for that they would probably choose to have his administration made easy and agreeable; and to that end might think it prudent to withdraw those harsh, disagreeable, and unjust instructions with which most of his predecessors had been hampered: the assembly therefore believed fully, and rejoiced sincerely. They showed the new governor every mark of respect and regard that was in their power. They readily and cheerfully went into every thing he recommended to them. And when he and his authority were insulted and endangered by a lawless murdering mob, they and their friends took arms at his call, and formed themselves round him for his defence, and the support of his government. But when it was found, that those mischievous instructions still subsisted, and were even farther extended; when the governor began, unprovoked, to send the house affronting messages, seizing every imaginary occasion of reflecting on their conduct; when every other symptom appeared of fixed deep-rooted family malice, which could but a little while bear the unnatural covering that had been thrown over it, what wonder is it, if all the old wounds broke out and bled afresh? if all the old grievances, still unredressed, were recollected; if despair succeeded of [seeing] any peace with a family, that could make such returns to all their overtures of kindness! And when in the very proprietary council, composed of staunch friends of the family, and chosen for their attachment to it, it was observed, that the old men (1 Kings, chap. xii.) withdrew themselves, finding their opinion slighted, and that all measures were taken by the advice of two or three young men (one of whom too denies his share in them) is it any wonder, since like causes produce like effects, if the assembly, notwithstanding all their veneration for the first proprietor, should say, with the children of Israel, under the same circumstances, "What portion have we in David, or inheritance in the son of Jesse? To your tents, O Israel!"
Under these circumstances, and a conviction that while so many natural sources of difference subsisted between proprietaries and people, no harmony in government long subsist (without which neither the commands of the crown could be executed, nor the public good promoted) the house resumed the consideration of a measure that had often been proposed in former assemblies; a measure, that every proprietary province in America had, from the same causes, found themselves obliged to take, and had actually taken, or were about to take; and a measure, that had happily succeeded, wherever it was taken; I mean the recourse to an immediate royal government.
They therefore, after a thorough debate, and making no less than twenty-five unanimous resolves, expressing the many grievances this province had long laboured under, through the proprietary government, came to the following resolution, viz. "Resolved, nemine contradicente, That this house will adjourn, in order to consult their constituents, whether an humble address should be drawn up and transmitted to his Majesty; praying that he would be graciously pleased to take the people of this province under his immediate protection and government, by completing the agreement heretofore made with the first proprietary for the sale of the government to the crown, or otherwise as to his wisdom and goodness shall seem meet[66]."