Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/440

ing or apprehending the delinquents (we must not call them murderers). They assemble again, and with arms in their hands approach the capital. The Government truckles, condescends to cajole them, and drops all prose- cution of their crimes ; while honest citizens, threatened in their lives and fortunes, flee the province, as having no confidence in the people' s protec- tion. We are daily threatened with more of these tumults ; and the Gov- ernment, which in its distress called aloud on the sober inhabitants to come with arms to its assistance, now sees those who afforded that assistance daily libelled, abused, and menaced by its partisans for so doing ; whence it has little reason to expect such assistance on another occasion. This border episode, sanguinary as it was, would have had less significance but for the heat of local politics then existing. The disputes between the people through their Assemblymen with the Proprietaries, were reaching a culmination. The advent in the province in the previous autumn of a Governor of Penn's name and blood had produced great hopes of a harmo- nious government ; but it was soon found he came with family instructions as rigid as his predecessors ; and the popular disap- pointment was greater in proportion to the height upon which favorable hopes had been built. The outbreak of the Paxton Boys showed the weakness of government, and afforded fresh material for the advocates of a change to employ in their argu- ments, and Franklin's Narrative made a lively picture of the situation as they apprehended it. Governor Penn proposed a Militia Bill, seeing the weakness of the province in self-defence, and the Assembly framed one in which due regard was had to the nomination of officers by the companies, but the Governor returned the bill, as it did not clothe him with the sole power of their appointment, and the bill was accordingly lost. 6 Renewed dissensions on the supply bill arose upon the clause which subjected the Proprietary lands to a modified taxation, which the Governor contended should be the maximum for all their lands, whether improved or unimproved ; and the finan- cial necessities of the province were such that the Assembly finally yielded the point, but in great wrath. Convinced that In September, 1764, under the name of Verilas Franklin wrote his Remarks on a particular militia bill rejected by the Proprietor's Deputy, or Governor. Bigelow iii. 304.