GRIEVANCES OF PENNSYLVANIA. 315 CHAPTER XXII. GRIEVANCES OF PENNSYLVANIA -REMONSTRANCE TO PRO- BEFORE entering upon the narration of Franklin's life and services in England, as the agent of Pennsylvania, it will be proper to give a brief view of the reasons for sending him thither. These reasons are well set forth in a report, dated the 22d of February, 1757, drawn up by himself as chairman of the Assembly's committee on grievances. They are founded on alleged violations of the grant made by King Charles II. to William Penn; of Penn's own charter based on that grant, and defining the forms of government under which the province was settled; of certain fundamental laws of the province made pursuant to that charter; and finally of some of the principles and provisions of the constitution and laws of the mother-country most essential to civil liberty and justice, and from the protection of which, British subjects, wherever dwelling, could not be rightfully excluded by the king or his grantees. The royal grant, which was justly regarded by the colonists as the basis of the provincial constitution, and not to be violated or modified by the grantee or his suc cessors, gave to "William Penn, his heirs and assigns, and to his and their deputies," full power to make laws, "according to their best discretion, by and with the advice, assent, and approbation, of the freemen of the province or their delegates, for the good and happy government thereof," including "the raising of money, or any other end appertaining to the public state, peace, or safety," of the commonwealth thus to be constituted. This broad provision of the king's grant, it was held, precluded all those instructions which had occasioned so much trouble, controversy, and impediment to the public business, not only because it was absolutely binding on the deputy-governors as well as their principals the Proprietaries, but also because such instructions were wholly incompatible with that "best discretion" which they were bound to exercise, and this, too, in conjunction with the co-ordinate "advice, assent, and approbation," of the people of the province, as expressed by their representatives, in whom, it was maintained, the grant had vested "an original right of legislation, which neither the Proprietaries nor any other person could divest, restrain, or abridge, without violating and destroying the letter, spirit, and design, of the grant." The obnoxious instructions, therefore, were a manifest encroachment on the vested rights of the people, as well as on the legal and proper discretion of the governor; and to such an extent had they restrained and abridged just legislation, that no bill to raise supplies for the public service, howsoever "reasonable, expedient, or necessary" it might be, for the welfare and protection of the province, could be made a law, unless on complying with the instructions by wholly exempting the estates of the Proprietaries from their equal rateable assessments though they constituted by far the largest private interest in the province, and would be proportionately bene fited by its security, growth, and prosperity; while, by the laws of England, "the rents, honors, and castles, of the crown," though not the private property of the person wearing the crown, were actually taxed and paid "their proportion of the supplies granted for the defence of the realm and the support of the government;" and while the sovereign and his nobles, as well as all other tax-paying inhabitants of England, were thus indirectly but really contributing "their proportion toward the defence of America," including Pennsylvania, it was held to be “in a more especial manner the duty of the Proprietaries to pay their proportion" of the taxes required for the preservation of their own provincial estates. The exemption of those estates, therefore, was declared to be " as unjust as it was illegal, and as new as it was ar bitrary." It was further urged that, by virtue alike of the royal grant and of the colonial charter framed by Penn himself, the provincial Assembly, when convened and acting as a legislative body in its provincial sphere and for its legitimate purposes, was as fully endowed with all the powers and privileges of such a body as the English House of Commons, possessing the incontestable right of granting supplies and laying taxes "in any manner they may think most easy to the people, and being the sole judges of the measure, mode, and time," of so doing; but that the instructions of the Proprietaries, nevertheless, tended directly and manifestly to subvert all those rights and privileges, especially in assuming arbitrarily to control the action of the Assembly in framing and passing bills for raising money, so as to render that body, even if it should forego its just powers and the rights of its constituents, absolutely unable to raise the supplies requisite for the defence and welfare of the province. Another prominent ground of complaint was the con dition of the judiciary. Under the original charter framed by William Penn, the judges of the courts of record held their offices during good behavior; but this independent tenure had latterly been changed, and the judges now held only during the pleasure of the Proprietaries or their deputy-governors. The alleged consequence was, that the "judges being subject to the influence and direction" of those who gave them their commissions, the laws were "often wrested from their true sense to serve particular purposes; the foundations of justice became liable to be destroyed; and the lives, laws, liberties, privileges, and properties of the people, rendered precarious and insecure." The enlistment, by the officers of the king's regular troops in the colonies, of immigrant servants bound for a specific term of years to their masters, was also presented as a heavy grievance, inasmuch as it "not only prevented the cultivation of the land, and diminished the trade and commerce of the province," but was rendered peculiarly odious by its unequal operation; for there was no general regulation for an impartial distribution of the burden, and the servants were impressed into the army, not only against the consent of their employers, but without making the latter any compensation for the loss of those services for which they had paid and of which they were thus forcibly deprived. The Proprietaries, moreover, had pursued a most odious policy in another respect. Although the expense of the treaties with the Indians for the cession of their lands and for the regulation of intercourse with them, was borne by the province, yet the choicest of those lands were monopolized by the Proprietaries. This ground of complaint was not included in Franklin's report to the Assembly, and was not, indeed, technically illegal; for it had, with crafty foresight, been provided at an early day that all bargains by individual colonists with any of the Indians for the purchase of lands, if made without the consent of the Proprietaries, should be utterly void, while the Proprietaries themselves were not subjected in this particular to any restriction. This monopoly on their part, however, grew into such an abuse as greatly increased the odium against them, and served to extend and strengthen the general repugnance to the whole scheme of their government. Besides these complaints against the conduct and administration of the Proprietaries and their instructed deputies, the province had another weighty grievance to complain of as resulting from the action of the king. By the original grant to William Penn, though the laws passed by the provincial legislature were ultimately to be submitted to the king in council, and if there rejected were to become void, yet five years were allowed for making such submission, and meanwhile the laws became immediately operative in the province. This provision in the grant was introduccd, not to enable the king and council to control the internal policy of the province, but simply to keep the royal government informed thereof, and secure the allegiance of the provincial authorities and people. Latterly, however, instructions from the king's ministers, as well as from the Proprietaries, had been sent out, prohibiting a certain class of laws from taking effect, if passed, until after they had received the sanction of his majesty in council. This prohibition was aimed particularly against the enactment of laws authorizing the creation of bills of credit to be used in the province as a circulating medium; and it was felt to be a serious injury to the business of the people, as well as a plain encroachment upon their chartered rights; for this paper currency, in the very great scarcity of hard money produced by the nature and condition of the commerce |