CHAP. fer, and fines upon devises were still exacted.

VI.

He

enjoyed a perpetual port duty of fourteen pence a 1754. ton, on vessels not owned in the province, yielding not far from five thousand dollars a year; and he also exacted a tribute for licenses to hawkers and pedlers, and to ordinaries.

These were the private income of Lord Baltimore. For the public service he needed no annual grants. By an act of 1704,1 which was held to be permanent, an export tax of a shilling on every hogshead of tobacco gave an annually increasing income of already not much less than seven thousand dollars, more than enough for the salary of his lieutenantgovernor; while other officers were paid by fees and perquisites. Thus the Assembly scarcely had occasion to impose taxes, except for the wages of its own members.

2

Beside the power of appointing colonial officers, independent of the people, Lord Baltimore, as prince palatine, could raise his liegemen to defend his province. His was also the power to pass ordinances for the preservation of order; to erect towns and cities; to grant titles of honor; and his the advowson of every benefice. The colonial act of 1702 had divided Maryland into parishes, and established the Anglican Church by an annual tax of forty pounds of tobacco on every poll. The parishes were about forty in number, increasing in value, some of them promising soon to yield a thousand pounds sterling a year. Thus the lewd Lord Baltimore had more church patronage than any landholder in England; and, as there was no bishop in America, ruffians,

1 Bacon's Laws of Maryland, 1704, c. x. 211.

2 Trott's Collection of Laws, &c., 172.

VI.

fugitives from justice, men stained by intemperance CHAP. and lust,' (I write with caution, the distinct allegations being before me,) nestled themselves, through 1754. his corrupt and easy nature, in the parishes of Maryland.

The king had reserved no right of revising the laws of Maryland, nor could he invalidate them, except as they should be found repugnant to those of England. Though the Acts of Trade were in force, the royal power was specially restrained "from imposing or causing to be imposed any customs or other taxations, quotas, or contributions whatsoever, within the province, or upon any merchandise, whilst being laden or unladen in its ports." The people, of whom about one-twelfth were Roman Catholics, shared power through the Assembly; and as their soil had never been ravaged, their wealth never exhausted by taxation, the scattered planters enjoyed, in their delightful climate, as undisturbed and as happy a life as was compatible with the prevalence of negro slavery and the limitations on popular

power.

4

3

In Pennsylvania with the counties on Delaware, the people, whose numbers appeared to double in sixteen years, were already the masters, and to dispute their authority was but to introduce an apparent anarchy. Of the noble territory the joint proprietors were Thomas and Richard Penn; the former holding three quarters of the whole. Inheritance might sub

Several Letters of the Lieutenant-governor Sharpe. But see in particular H. Sharpe to HammersÎy, 22 June, 1768, and T. B. Chandler to S. Johnson, 9 June, 1767.

2 Charter for Maryland, §xvii. and § xx.

3 The estimate is that of Lieutenant-governor Sharpe.

4 Franklin's Works, iv. 40.

CHAP. divide it indefinitely. The political power that had VI. been bequeathed to them brought little personal 1754. dignity or benefit. The wilderness domain was theirs; though Connecticut, which claimed to extend to the Pacific, was already appropriating to itself a part of their territory, and, like the Penns, sought to confirm its claim by deeds from the Six Nations.1

The lieutenant-governor had a negative on legislation, but he himself depended on the Assembly for his annual support, and had often to choose between compliance and poverty. To the Council, whom the proprietaries appointed, and to the proprietaries themselves, the right to revise legislative acts was denied, and long usage confirmed the denial.2 In the land of the Penns, the legislature had but one branch, and of that branch Benjamin Franklin was the soul. It had an existence of its own; could meet on its own adjournments, and no power could prorogue or dissolve it; but a swift responsibility brought its members annually before their constituents. The Assembly would not allow the proprietaries in England to name judges; they were to be named by the lieutenant-governor on the spot, and like him depended on the Assembly for the profit of their posts. All sheriffs and coroners were chosen by the people. Moneys were raised by an excise, and were kept and were disbursed by provincial commissioners. The land-office was under proprietary control, and, to balance its political influence, the Assembly passionately insisted on continuing

1 Treaty between the Connecticut Susquehanna Company and

Chiefs of the Six Nations, Albany, 11 July, 1754.

2 Proud's Pennsylvania, ii. 284.

under their own supervision the loan-office of paper CHAP.

money.

VI.

The laws established for Pennsylvania complete 1754. enfranchisement in the domain of thought. Its able press developed the principles of civil rights; its principal city cherished science; and, by private munificence, a ship, at the instance of Franklin, had attempted to discover the Northwestern passage.1 A library, too, was endowed, and an academy chartered, giving the promise of intellectual activity and independence. No oaths or tests barred the avenue to public posts. The Church of England, unaided by law, competed with all forms of dissent. The Presbyterians, who were willing to fight for their liberties, began to balance the enthusiasts, who were ready to suffer for them. Yet the Quakers, humblest amongst plebeian sects, and boldest of them all,-disjoined from the Middle Age without even a shred or a mark of its bonds, abolishing not the aristocracy of the sword only, but all war,-not prelacy and priestcraft only, but outward symbols and ordinances, external sacraments and forms,-pure spiritualists, and apostles of the power and the freedom of mind, still swayed legislation and public opinion. Ever restless of authority, they were jealous of the new generation of proprietaries who had fallen off from their society, regulated the government with a view to their own personal profit, shunned taxation of their colonial estates, and would not answer as equals to the plain, untitled names, which alone the usages of the Society of Friends allowed.2

MS. Letter of B. Franklin, Philadelphia, 28 Feb. 1753.

2 Letters of T. & J. Penn to the Lt. Governor of Pennsylvania.

1

CHAP. New Jersey, now a royal government, enjoyed, VI. with the aged Belcher, comparative tranquillity. 1754. The generality of the people he found to be “very rustical," and deficient in "learning." To the Calvinist governor the Quakers of this province seemed to want "orthodoxy in the principles of religion;" but he parried for them the oppressive disposition of the Board of Trade, and the rapacity of the great claimants of lands, who held seats in the Council. "I have to steer," he would say, "between Scylla and Charybdis; to please the king's ministers at home, and a touchy people here; to luff for one, and bear away for another." Sheltered by its position, New Jersey refused to share the expense of Indian alliances, often left its own annual expenses unprovided for, and, instead of showing zeal in assuming the burdens of war, its gentle and most obstinate enthusiasts trusted in the extension of the peaceable kingdom "from sea to sea," and the completion of the prophecies, that "nation shall not lift up the sword against nation, nor learn war any more."

2

There, too, on the banks of the Delaware, men that labored for inward stillness, and to live in the spirit of truth, learned to love God in all his manifestations in the visible world; and they testified against cruelty towards the least creature in whom his breath had kindled the flame of life. Conscious of an enlargement of gospel love, John Woolman, a tailor by trade, content in the happiness of humility, "stood up like a trumpet, through which the Lord speaks to his people," to make the negro masters sensible of the

3

1 Gov. Belcher to the Earl of Leven.

2 Belcher to Sir Peter Warren.

3 A testimony of the Monthly Meeting of Friends, held in Burlington, N. J.