vincial treasurer for the amount, which was signed by the clerk of the Assembly. All payments by the Legislature, including members' salaries, were effected in this manner. From time to time special inquiries were made, either by the committee of accounts, or a special committee, concerning the expenditures incurred in administering the government.

The loan-office had been managed with singular fidelity. Only one officer during the seventy years of provincial banking had proved recreant to his trust. Enough of his property was seized to pay his indebtedness, so that the Province lost nothing. Nor did the Province lose anything from borrowers. The interest was not always promptly paid, but the security taken was ample and did not fluctuate greatly. Besides loans to individuals, other loans were made from time to time by the Province to the counties. In Philadelphia one of these was used for building an almshouse. Lancaster and Bedford Counties appropriated their loans for the erection of court-houses and jails.

After the beginning of the war with the French and Indians, large sums were needed for military expenditures. Great Britain contributed something; the colonies, however, were obliged to depend for the most part on themselves. The most practicable form of loan by Pennsylvania was the issue of bills of credit. These were authorized from time to time in varying amounts, and taxes were imposed for redeeming them. These could be paid in the bills, and one mode of extinguishing them was to retire them after they had reached the treasury. That was the ordinary mode of redemption. On many occasions objections were raised by the gov ernor to their issue. One of the usual objections was

397 his instructions from the proprietaries, forbidding him to sign any bills of this character. On one occasion he indicated his willingness to pass such a law with a rider suspending its operation until it had received the royal assent. The Assembly preferred to lose the bill rather than to introduce such a dangerous precedent, so the measure failed. Another objection was the length of time during which the excise bill, providing for their redemption, was to be in force. By one of them it was fixed at ten years, and the governor objected to such a long period, discovering therein a design on the part of the Legislature to become entirely independent of the executive. Another objection was his unwillingness to tax the property of the proprietaries for this purpose. In 1755 a bill was issued for £60,000 redeemable in four years by a tax on the estates and polls of the inhabitants. It however embraced the proprietary estates, and as the governor was unwilling to sign the bill, it was lost. On another occasion a bill was lost for issuing £50,000, because it was proposed to assess some of the proprietary lands at a higher rate of assessment than similar lands belonging to the inhabitants. From the beginning in 1723, to the last issue during the provincial administration, the issues of bills of credit aggregated £1,316,650.

How much did the paper currency depreciate during the half century preceding the Revolution? Franklin contended that there had been none. It was admitted that a merchant who had a bill to pay in England in specie was obliged to pay a very considerable premium for the specie to transmit to the foreign merchant. Franklin claimed that this was due to the scarcity of specie, and did not prove a depreciation in the value of

the bills. Tested by the prices of labor and commodities, it is not easy to form a judgment. Some things advanced after the introduction of paper-money, and some things declined. There was no uniformity, either in the decline or the advance of the price of anything. If silver be used as the test, there was unquestionably a depreciation, though much less than in other colonies that issued bills. There was unquestionably a scarcity of specie in the Province to pay for foreign merchandise, and had not new supplies been drawn from the West Indies, the Province would have been completely drained. The straggling pieces would have been too scarce to serve as a test of value, but only as reminders of a lost money.

CHAPTER VII.

PROPRIETARY GOVERNMENT.-JOHN PENN, GOVERNOR. CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION. 1764-1776.

SECTION I.

Events from 1764 to the Opening of the Continental
Congress in 1774.

IF proprietary government was doomed, another government was to spring up and be as eagerly welcomed by the friends of national liberty as it was to be strongly disliked by the lovers of royal power. The govern

ment of Penn, so liberal in form and spirit, was to be supplanted by a government purely representative of the people. But the transformation was not to come suddenly, like the flooding of the earth with sunlight. The War of Independence was only the bursting of a newer order of political ideas that had long been germinating.

For the development of the courage to appeal to arms, the unwarlike sons of America were indebted to their British brethren. Had no French war created within them the feeling of equality with the British in valor and skill, independence would have remained for a far longer period a vague and despairing longing instead of an actual, bright reality.

The growth of the colonies and of their might in overthrowing French dominion in America, awakened the British Ministry, and Grenville, First Commissioner of

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the Treasury, believed the time had come for lightening the burden of the English tax-payer by requiring the colonists to bear a larger share. For many years they had been taxed in various ways, but no permanent system had been fastened on them. For more than a century colonial commerce had felt the deadening grip of its loving mother. Navigation acts, restricting American exportations to English ships, had long been in operation, though imperfectly enforced. The act of 1651 was renewed in 1660 with the addition that "no merchandise shall be imported into the plantations but in English vessels navigated by Englishmen." Three years later another act confined all colonial imports to English vessels, except salt for the fisheries, wines from Madeira and Azores and provisions from Scotland and Ireland. These acts were aimed at the Dutch, who were greatly profiting by American commerce. In 1672 the freedom of trade between the colonies was destroyed by laying taxes on inter-colonial commerce, and after 1699 wool in no form could be exported. In 1719 the Commons declared that American manufacturers were dangerous, as they increased the independence of the colonies. In 1732 the exportation of American hats was forbidden. The next year a duty was laid on all imports of molasses except what came from the West Indies, and in 1750 rolling-mills, forges and furnaces were suppressed. Thus, as new industries were started, new shackles were forged. Between 1660, when the navigation act was passed in a more complete form, and 1763, American industry and commerce had been enchained by twenty-nine separate acts, all aimed to enrich the people of Great Britain at the cost of those living in Ameriea.