membered, gave it in the first instance as the price of an exemption from all other taxes.

Clear, however, it will be made to every unprejudiced mind, that such a specific clause neither is nor ever was necessary; and, that in virtue of the inherent right, as well as the power and authority reposed in the freemen to tax themselves by ways and means of their own providing, all the property of the province lies indiscriminately at their discretion, subject to an equal taxation.

The paper currency of the province is next to be mentioned; and as that was out of prospect while the several frames of government were under consideration, it could not be comprehended in any of them.

The

was,

and so continued to be, for many then currency years after, gold and silver of any species by weight; at first in so irregular a manner, and at such uncertain rates, as gave the crafty many opportunities to prey upon the ignorant and necessitous; consequently was productive of much contention, embarrassment, and confusion.

By royal proclamation, in the fourth of queen Anne, the rates and values of all foreign coins current in the English colonies were limited and ascertained; and, in her sixth, the contents of the said proclamation were enacted into a law, which is still in force.

But the annual influx of these foreign coins, through what channel soever, or from whatsoever source, by no means answered the demands of an annual issue.

From England came all the manufactures consumed in the plantations; and all the returns they could make by their commodities sent thither directly, or the product of them at other markets, fell far short of the balance growing against them.

The defect, therefore, was to be made good in gold and silver, and was so as long and as often as any could be found. Every colony, in its turn, was, consequently, drained of its specie; and, as it is an impossibility known and avowed, for any trading community to subsist without some medium of circulation, every colony in its turn was obliged to have re

course to the same expedient of uttering provincial bills of credit, and making them answer, as far as possible, all the topical purposes of gold and silver; by which their several capitals were enlarged; the gold and silver became commodities that could be spared for exportation; and the merchants at home were paid in that gold and silver, without any provincial detriment.

Pennsylvania, however, if not the very last, was one of the last, which gave into it. It was not till the year 1722 (Keith, governor) that they made their first experiment; and even then they proceeded with the utmost caution and circumspection, in every step they took.

Knowing, for example, that the danger of depreciation was the only danger they had to guard against, and that nothing but an over quantity, defect of solid security, and of proper provision to recall and cancel them, could create that danger, they issued at first but fifteen thousand pounds: they made no loans but on land-security or plate deposited in the loan-office: they obliged the borrowers to pay five per cent. for the sums they took up: they made their bills a tender in all payments of all kinds, on pain of vacating the debt, or forfeiting the commodity: to keep them as near as possible on a par with gold and silver, they imposed sufficient penalties on all those who presumed to make any bargain or sale upon cheaper terms, in case of being paid in the one preferable to the other: they provided for the gradual reduction of them, by enacting, that one eighth of the principal, as well as the whole interest money should be annually paid. And it was not till they were convinced by experience of the utility of the measure, and the insufficiency of the sum, that they adventured to issue thirty thousand pounds more.

Such, moreover, was the benefit apparently resulting from it; such the inconveniency apprehended by every body from the scarcity of money sure to follow a too precipitate discharge of the loans; and such the apparent growth of the province during this interval, that, in the year 1729 (Patrick Gordon, governor) it was thought adviseable to encrease the provincial capital by a new emission of bills, to the amount

of thirty thousand pounds, and to render the repayments still easier to the borrowers, by reducing them to one sixteenth a year.

:

Again in the year 1739 (George Thomas, governor) occasion was taken from the discoveries repeatedly made, that these provincial-bills had been counterfeited, not only to call them all in, in order to their being replaced with others of a new impression, &c. but also for the reasons before given, to issue the further sums of eleven thousand one hundred and ten pounds five shillings, (which, added to the sums already in circulation, made their whole capital amount to eighty thousand pounds) to be current for sixteen years.

Lastly: finding, that the like, or a greater sum, in case the province should grow still greater, would in all probability be always necessary, the assembly moreover provided, that so fast as any of the former borrowers should repay their provincial-money, the trustees of the loan-office might reemit the same sums during the said term of sixteen years, on the same conditions, either to them or others, without any new authority for that purpose.

And, upon the whole, it is to be observed, that the assembly, in establishing this paper currency, in taking upon themselves, as representatives of the province, to appoint the trustees and other officers charged with the administration of it; in providing that the said trustees and officer should be responsible to the province for their conduct in it; and in reserving to the assembly, for the time being, the disposition and application of the annual product, met not with any such objection from their governors, or the proprietaries, or the ministry here at home, as could excite the least apprehension of any such contest, as might either embroil the province, affect the interest, or incommode the government of it.

It is true, the proprietaries and their agents did, from the beginning, discover a repugnance to this measure, till they found themselves considered in it: like the snail with his horns, they had no sensations for the province, but what reached them through the nerves of power and profit. Profit,

though ranked last, they consulted first; and when possessed of one point, they thought they might wrangle more successfully for the other.

If the widow Penn acquiesced in the paper-money acts passed by Keith, she reprimanded him for passing them; and in a manner forbid him to pass any more.

Gordon (Keith's successor) having over and over again acknowledged his conviction of the conveniencies arising to the province from a reasonable increase of their paper currency, gave the assembly to understand, in so many words, that nothing but the gratification of the proprietaries in the affair of their quit-rents, would prevent the opposition they were otherwise to expect to the act then before them in England.

By special contract with the several purchasers, these quit-rents of theirs were to be paid in sterling money; and, as it was impossible, by any provision whatsoever, to make the provincial currency answer the universal purposes of gold and silver, so no prevision could hinder these metals from having the preference of paper. To convert paper into specie or bullion could not of course but be attended with some cost; and hence the proprietary-remittances could not but come shorter home. When, therefore, by the eightythousand pounds act, paper was to become the provincial establishment, they would not allow their share of the provincial advantage resulting from it (which was, at least, equal to that of the province, as will hereafter become apparent) to be what it really was, an adequate consideration, but insisted, not only on having the difference between paper and specie or bullion made up to them, and that the difference of exchange should be made up to them also; or, in other words, that the pounds sterling due to them in Pennsylvania, should be paid to them nett in England.

In short, the sum of one thousand two hundred pounds, was in this manner extorted from the province, together with an annuity of one hundred and thirty pounds, to continue during the circulation of those bills; which will serve to shew, at least, that the province could not be more stubborn,

L

upon other occasions, than the proprietaries were selfish on

this.

There remains yet another topic to be touched upon, which will require a more tender consideratiou from the reader than perhaps it may always find.

Mr. Penn and his followers were of that sect, who call themselves by the amiable and levelling name of Friends; and who, having been at first opprobriously called by that of Quakers, have been forced, by the joint tyranny of imposition and custom, to answer to it ever since.

Of these, the majority carried along with them a scruple better accommodated to the forming of a society and preserving it in peace, than to the protecting it from those insults and depredations which pride and lust of dominion have at all periods committed on their weaker neighbours; and from the visitation of which, no system of politics, mo rals, or religion, hath as yet been able to preserve mankind.

All their views, purposes, and endeavours were narrowed, therefore, to the forms and uses of civil life; and to link the several parts of their own little community in the most expedient manner together.

Nor, indeed, had they at that time any other object before them: alike to wage war against any power in alliance with England, and to correspond with any power at war with her, was expressly forbid both to the proprietary and the province, by the fifteenth section of the royal charter.

The French were too feeble in America and too remote from Pennsylvania, to be then apprehended. The provinces adjacent were branches from the same root, and responsible for their conduct to the same laws; and the Indians, from the very beginning, had been considered and treated as equally the sons of one common father.

Land wanted by us was a drug to them. The province, then to be allotted, peopled, and cultivated, had not been wrested from them by violence, but purchased for a suitable consideration. In the contract between the proprietary and his sub-adventurers, all possible care had been taken, that no cause of complaint should be administered to them: in