One of Penn’s first acts was to impress the assembly with the necessity of discouraging illicit trade and suppressing piracy. He did it with so much success that the assembly not only passed two laws to this effect, but also took a further step to clear the government of Pennsylvania from all imputations by expelling one of its members, James Brown, a son-in-law of Governor Markham, who was more or less justly accused of piracy. He was equally successful with his recommendations to the assembly concerning a new charter, the slave-trade, and the treatment and education of the negroes already in the province. But when, in 1701, he asked in the king’s name for a contribution of £350 towards the fortifications on the frontiers of New York, the assembly decided to refer the consideration of this matter to another meeting, or “until more emergent occasions shall require our further proceedings therein.”
The evident intention of the ministry in England to reduce the proprietary governments in the English colonies to royal ones, “under pretence of advancing the prerogatives of the crown,” compelled Penn to return to England in the latter part of 1701. But before he could leave a quarrel broke out in the assembly between the deputies from the Lower Counties, now Delaware, and those of the province. The former were accused of having obtained some exclusive powers or rights for themselves which the others would not allow them, and in consequence the men of the Lower Counties withdrew from the assembly in high dudgeon. After long discussions, and by giving promises to agree to a separation of that district from the province under certain conditions, Penn at last managed to patch up a peace between the two factions. He then went to England.
The new charter for the province and territories, signed by Penn, October 25, 1701, was more republican in character than those of the neighboring colonies. It not only provided for an assembly of the people with great powers, including those of creating courts, but to a certain extent it submitted to the choice of the people the nomination of some of the county officers. The section concerning liberty of conscience did not discriminate against the members of the Church of Rome. The closing section fulfilled the promise already made by Penn, that in case the representatives of the two territorial districts could not agree within three years to join in legislative business, the Lower Counties should be separated from Pennsylvania. On the same day Penn established by letters-patent a council of state for the province, “to consult and assist the proprietary himself or his deputy with the best of their advice and council in public affairs and matters relating to the government and the peace and well-being of the people; and in the absence of the proprietary, or upon the deputy’s absence out of the province, his death, or other incapacity, to exercise all and singular the powers of government.” The original town and borough of Philadelphia, having by this time “become near equal to the city of New York in trade and riches,”[481] was raised, by patent of the 25th of October, 1701, to the rank of a city, and, like the province, could boast of having a more liberal charter than her neighbors; for the municipal officers were to be elected by the representatives of the people of the city, and not appointed by the governor, as in New York.
The government of the province had been entrusted by Penn to Andrew Hamilton, also governor for the proprietors in New Jersey, with James Logan as provincial secretary, to whom was likewise confided the management of the proprietary estates, thus making him in reality the representative of Penn and the leader of his party. Hamilton died in December, 1702; but before his death he had endeavored in vain to bring the representatives of the two sections of his government together again. The Delaware members remained obstinate, and finally, while Edward Shippen, a member of the council and first mayor of Philadelphia, was acting as president, it was settled that they should have separate assemblies, entirely independent of each other.
The first separate assembly for Pennsylvania proper met at Philadelphia, in October, 1703, and by its first resolution showed that the Quakers, so dominant in the province, were beginning to acquire a taste for authority, and meant to color their religion with the hue of political power. According to the new charter, the assembly, elected annually, was to consist of four members for each county, and was to meet at Philadelphia on the 14th of October of each year, sitting upon their own adjournments. Upon the separation of the legislative bodies of the two sections, Pennsylvania claimed to be entitled to eight members for each county, which, being duly elected and met, reasserted the powers granted by the charter; but when the governor and council desired to confer with them they would adjourn without conference. Upon the objection from the governor that they could not sit wholly upon their own adjournment, they immediately decided not to sit again until the following March, and thus deprive the governor and council of every chance to come to an understanding on the matter.
Before President Shippen could take any step toward settling this question, John Evans, a young Welshman, lately appointed deputy-governor by Penn, arrived in Philadelphia (December, 1703). The new-comer at once called both assemblies together, directing them to sit in Philadelphia in April, 1704, in utter disregard of the agreement of separation. He renewed Hamilton’s efforts to effect again a legislative union, and also failed, not because the Delaware members were opposed to it, but because now the Pennsylvania representatives, probably disgusted with the obstinacy of the former, absolutely refused to have anything to do with them. Governor Evans took this refusal very ill and resented it in various ways, by which the state of affairs was brought to such a pass that neither this nor the next assembly, under the speakership of David Lloyd, accomplished anything of importance, but complained bitterly to Penn of his deputy. In the latter part of the same year the first assembly for the Lower Counties met in the old town of New Castle, and was called upon by Governor Evans to raise a militia out of that class of the population who were not prevented by religious scruples from bearing arms,—soldiers being then needed for the war against France and Spain. About a year later, having become reconciled with the Pennsylvania assembly of 1706, Evans persuaded the Delaware representatives to pass a law “for erecting and maintaining a fort for her Majesty’s service at the Town of New Castle upon Delaware.” This law exacted a toll in gunpowder from every vessel coming from the sea up the river.[482]
These quarrels between the governor and the assemblies were repeated every year. At one time they had for ground the refusal of the Quakers to support the war which was waging against the French and Indians on the frontiers. At another they disagreed upon the establishment of a judiciary. These disturbances produced financial disruptions, and Penn himself suffered therefrom to such an extent that he was thrown into a London prison, and had finally to mortgage his province for £6,600. The recall of Evans, in 1709, and the appointment of Charles Gookin in his stead, did not mend matters. Logan, Penn’s intimate friend and representative, was finally compelled to leave the country; and, going to England (1710), he induced Penn to write a letter to the Pennsylvania assembly, in which he threatened to sell the province to the crown, a surrender by which he was to receive £12,000. The transfer was in fact prevented by an attack of apoplexy from which Penn suffered in 1712. The epistle, however, brought the refractory assembly to terms. After exacting a concession of their right to sit on their own adjournment, they consented to the establishment of a judiciary, without, however, a court of appeal, and finally yielded to passing votes to defray the expenses of government. They even gave £2,000 to the crown in aid of the war. Affairs went smoothly under Gookin’s administration until, in 1714, the governor, whose mind is supposed to have been impaired, began the quarrel again by complaining about his scanty salary and the irregularity of payments. He also insisted foolishly upon the illegality of affirmation; foolishly, because the Quakers, who would not allow any other kind of oath, were the dominant party in the province.[483] Not satisfied with the commotion he had stirred up, he suddenly turned upon his friend Logan, and had now not only the anti-Penn faction, but also Penn’s adherents, to contend with. The last ill-advised step resulted in his recall (1717) and the appointment of Sir William Keith, the last governor commissioned by Penn himself; for the great founder of Pennsylvania died in 1718.
While after Penn’s death his heirs went to law among themselves about the government and proprietary rights in Pennsylvania, Governor Keith, who as surveyor of customs in the southern provinces had become sufficiently familiar with Penn’s affairs, entered on the performance of his duties under the most favorable conditions. The assembly had become weary to disgust with the continuous disputes and altercations forced upon them by the last two governors, and it was therefore easily influenced by Sir William’s good address and evident effort to please. Without hesitation it voted a salary of £500 for the governor, and acted upon his suggestion to examine the state of the laws, some of which were obsolete or had expired by their own limitations. The province was somewhat disturbed by the lawsuit of the family for the succession, finally settled in favor of Penn’s children by his second wife, and by a war of the southern Indians with the Susquehanna and New York tribes; but nothing marred the relations between governor and legislature. Under the speakership of James Trent, later chief justice of New Jersey (where the city of Trenton was named after him),[484] an act for the advancement of justice and more certain administration thereof, a measure of great importance to the province, passed the previous year (1718), became a law by receiving the royal assent. Governor Keith’s proposal in 1720 to establish a Court of Chancery met with unqualified approval by the assembly. Under the next governor this court “came to be considered as so great a nuisance” that after a while it fell into disuse.
In 1721 the first great council which the Five Nations ever held with the white people outside of the province of New York and at any other place than Albany, N. Y., took place at Conestoga, and the disputes which had threatened the outlying settlements with the horrors of Indian war were amicably settled. The treaty of friendship made here was confirmed the next year at a council held at Albany, as in the mean time the wanton murder of an Iroquois by some Pennsylvania traders had somewhat strained the mutual relations.
The commercial and agricultural interests of the province began to suffer about this time for want of a sufficient quantity of a circulating medium. Divers means of relief were proposed, among them the issue of bills of credit. Governor Keith and the majority of the traders, merchants, and farmers were enchanted with the notion of fiat money, and overlooked or were unwilling to profit by the experiences of other provinces which had already suffered from the mischievous consequences of such a measure. The result was that, after considerable discussion, turning not so much upon the bills of credit themselves as upon the mode of issuing them and the method of guarding against their depreciation, the emission of £15,000 was authorized, despite the order of the king in council of May 19, 1720, which forbade all the governors of the colonies in America to pass any laws sanctioning the issue of bills of credit. It would lead us too far beyond the limits of this chapter to inquire whether, as Dr. Douglass, of Boston, suggested in 1749, the assembly ordering this emission of £15,000 bills of credit, and another of £30,000 in the same year, was “a legislature of debtors, the representatives of people who, from incogitancy, idleness, and profuseness, have been under a necessity of mortgaging their lands.” All the safeguards thrown around such a currency to prevent its depreciation proved in the end futile. The acts creating this debt of £45,000[485] provided for its redemption a pledge of real estate in fee simple of double the value, recorded in an office created for that purpose. The money so lent out was to be repaid into the office annually, in such instalments as would make it possible to sink the whole original issue within a certain number of years. In the first three years the sinking and destruction of the redeemed bills went on as directed by law; but under its operation the community found itself suffering from the contraction, although only about one seventh of the debt had been paid. The legislature, therefore, passed a law (1726) directing that the bills should not be destroyed, as the former acts required, but that, during the following eight years, they should be reissued. The population of the province, growing by natural increase and by immigration, seeming to require a larger volume of currency, a new emission of £30,000 was ordered in 1729 under the provisions of the laws of 1723. In 1731 the law of 1726 was reënacted, to prevent disasters which threatened the farmer as well as the merchant, and to avoid making new acts for emitting more bills. In 1739 the amount of bills in circulation, £68,890, was increased to £80,000, equal to £50,000 sterling, because the legislature had discovered that the former sum fell “short of a proper medium for negotiating the commerce and for the support of the government.” They justified this step, and tried to explain why a pound of Pennsylvania currency was of so much less value than a pound sterling by asserting that the difference arose only from the balance of Pennsylvania’s trade with Great Britain, which was in favor of the former, since more English goods found their way here now that bills of credit had become the fashion. The act of 1739 had made the bills then in circulation irredeemable for a short term of years, which in 1745 was extended to sixteen years more under the following modifications: the first ten years, up to 1755, no bill was to be redeemed, or, if redeemed, was to be reissued; after 1755 one sixth of the whole amount was to be paid in yearly and the bills were to be destroyed. In 1746 a further issue of £5,000 for the king’s use was ordered, to be sunk in ten yearly instalments of £500 each, and in 1749 Pennsylvania currency, valued in 1723 at thirteen shillings sterling per pound, had, like all other colonial money, so far depreciated that a pound was equal to eleven shillings and one and one third pence.[486]