Volume 1, Chapter 64, Government Returns to Pennsylvania
Let us now return to the situation of Pennsylvania in 1690. We have seen that by almost unanimous
resistance of the Quaker colony, Governor Blackwell's harsh attempt to re-impose a
state on an essentially anarchist Pennsylvania had failed ignominiously. Blackwell was forced
The Assembly in the Spring of 1690 refused to vote funds to aid Governor Penn. It also ignored a request from Jacob Leisler to help fight the French in King William's War, when a former Black Wellite, Secretary William Markham, asked for a governmental organization of the colony to provide for military defense against a supposed French and Indian threat, which never materialized.
The Council preserved the anarchist status of the colony by replying that any people interested might provide for their own defense at their own expense.
And even so, any militia had to be obedient to civil authority.
This effectively killed the idea of a militia in the colony.
The militiamongers were reluctant to pay for the services that they professed to desire so ardently.
Furthermore, the Assembly and Council continued their pre-1688 practice of rarely meeting,
of doing little even then, and therefore of rarely governing.
But William Penn, the absent proprietor, was not disposed to let Pennsylvania continue
in this anarchistic idol.
In March 1691, the colony received a message from Penn announcing his aim of appointing
of Giving a Deputy Governor and of Giving Pennsylvania the Option of Naming its Ruler.
Penn expressed a preference for a five-man commission of state to serve as deputy governor,
but the Pennsylvania Council overruled him and chose Thomas Lloyd, the great leader of
the anti-Blackwell resistance.
Lloyd assumed his new post in April.
With the accession of a continuous government official, government, unfortunately, was back
The assembly and council still met infrequently, and there was still no taxation in the colony.
In the meanwhile, the leading political dispute centered on the three lower counties of non-Quaker
Delaware.
Delaware, eager for self-government of its own, objected to all of its judges being named
by the central government in Philadelphia.
This dispute, becoming prominent in late 1690, reached its high point when Pennsylvania was
forced to re-assume government. Now a single governor would appoint Delaware's officials.
Bitter at this turn of affairs and at the idea of a tax to support a Pennsylvania governor,
the Delaware counties immediately decided to secede and found their own self-governing
The reimposition of government had directly provoked secession by Delaware. Governor Lloyd did his best to induce the seceding counties to return, promising in fact that they would never be forced by the central government to pay any of his salary, and that they would be allowed full local self-government without central interference. Delaware preferred, however, to assure itself of non-interference by remaining independent.
Finally, a compromise was reached in the winter of 1691-92.
William Penn agreed to appoint two deputy governors, Lloyd in Pennsylvania, Markham in Delaware.
These executives would control their respective appointments of officials as well as local matters,
while both areas agreed to elect representatives to a joint council and a general assembly.
and the Federal Assembly. Pennsylvania-Delaware now had two sets of executive officials and
a common legislature. Although a permanent government now existed and had nominal power,
Pennsylvania society was still quasi-anarchic, since no taxes were yet being levied by the
government. The government was still being wholly supported by voluntary subsidization
from the Proprietor. But in April 1692, the Council had passed a new bill for the re-establishment
of taxation. Making this a particularly bitter blow was Governor Lloyd's concurrence in
the bill. The specific tax proposal was one penny per pound of property, or less than
25 hundredths percent, with a minimum payment of two shillings. With the May Assembly, always
Is the great stronghold of libertarianism ratify this drastic and far-reaching proposal
to reintroduce taxation?
The freemen of Philadelphia and Chester sent the assembly petitions strongly protesting
the proposed tax.
The petitioners urged the assemblymen to keep their country free from bondage and slavery
and avoiding such ill methods as may render themselves in posterity liable thereto.
Heeding these protests, the assembly proved itself still a stronghold of liberty and ended
its session without passing any tax law. Unable to collect quit rents or impose taxes,
William Penn, rapidly losing money in his support of the Pennsylvania government,
cried poverty and begged the Quakers of Pennsylvania in early 1693 to lend him 10,000 pounds.
But the practical Quakers saw no sense in making such an enormous loan at heavy risk,
heavy not only because of Penn's financial straits, but also because of his shaky position at court,
owing to his friendship with the deposed James II. The loan request failed.
With the government treasury literally empty, Lloyd had to refuse the request of New York for funds to prosecute the war against New France.
In 1691 and again in 1693, Lloyd replied that there was no public treasury and that he himself was in great financial difficulty from lack of tax support.
At about this time, George Keith began to exert a great impact on Pennsylvania and on the neighboring Quaker colony of West New Jersey.
A scholarly Scottish Quaker, Keith had as Surveyor General immigrated to East New Jersey in the mid-1680s.
He soon established himself as the outstanding Quaker minister of the Middle Colonies.
of Colonies. But strong differences with the regular Quakers soon became evident. Religiously
far more conservative, Keith leaned toward Presbyterianism, toward formal articles of
creed, institutions of elders and deacons, and emphasis on scripture rather than on inner
light. Politically, Keith also was different from the regular Quakers. He was considerably
Having moved to Philadelphia in 1689 and become the Quaker schoolmaster there, Keith
was stimulated by the anarchistic condition of the colony.
He concluded logically that all participation in government was countered to Quaker principles.
Keith's fervor was particularly stimulated by Pennsylvania's return to government in
In the spring of 1691, and even before 1691, Quakers served at least intermittently as
government counselors in the colony. How, asked Keith, could a Quaker minister, like
Thomas Lloyd or Samuel Jennings, during these years living in Pennsylvania, professing belief
in non-violence, serve as a magistrate at all? Keith, in short, wished to press on from
From Quaker non-violence to pure individualistic anarchism of the non-violent variety.
With the religious and especially the political disagreements between the two groups of Quakers
ever intensifying, the split finally became open in the spring of 1692.
The Keithians, now calling themselves Christian Quakers, left the standard body of Quakers.
Since they struggled for influence over the body of the faithful, feeling ran high between
the two Quaker factions.
In September, the Keithian Quakers were expelled and formed their own organization.
After being persecuted so widely for religious differences, how did the Quakers react to
a split in their own ranks?
Unfortunately, not very differently from other groups.
The Keithians had drawn up a statement of their political and religious position and
William Bradford, the only printer in Philadelphia, and a Keithian, printed the document. In reply,
the Quaker officials arrested Bradford and the distributor of the pamphlet, John McComb,
on the charge of printing unlicensed books without including the name of the printer.
The Quaker magistrates confiscated the press and type of Bradford and withdrew McCombs'
license as a retailer. The Quaker government might not yet be able to levy taxes, but it
was now indeed a government with a vengeance. And from being the persecuted, the Quakers
had now become the persecutors.
Keith was naturally bitter. He protested the cruel treatment meted out to the two men and
and denounced Governor Lloyd, Samuel Jennings and the other magistrates on the council.
Although Keith tried to mitigate his offense in the eyes of the government by calling the
quarrel strictly a religious one, the government issued a proclamation against Keith at the
end of August. The magistrates demanded that Keith stop making speeches and publishing
pamphlets that have a tendency to sedition and disturbance of the peace, as also to the
The Subversion of the Present Government When the Keithians persisted in their protest,
the grand jury in October 1692 indicted three Keithian leaders, including Keith, for writing
a book denouncing Jennings and the other magistrates. The jury, incidentally, was packed with friends
of Jennings. And Keith fittingly accused his enemies of constituting the judge and jury
as well as the prosecution.
Keith also pointed out that Quakers never should go to court and thus resort to the
use of violence, but should always settle their disputes peacefully and voluntarily.
The three men, however, were convicted and fined, though the fines were never paid, and
they were denied the right to appeal to the council or to the provincial court.
Keith's charges that ministers were being judges and were using governmental authority
to suppress religious liberty must have seemed all too familiar to the colonists in America.
While the dispute over the Keithians was raging in the colonies, William Penn was, as a close
friend of the deposed James II, in deep political trouble in England.
King William was also peeved at the anarchistic conditions in the colony and angered, as rulers
always are, at the Quaker principles of pacifism.
Moreover, the King was anxious to weld the northern colonies into a fighting force for
attacking the French.
A pacifistic, virtually unarmed colony hardly suited his purpose.
Consequently, when Benjamin Fletcher was named Governor of New York in late 1692, he was also named Governor of Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Pennsylvania was now a royal colony.
William Penn courageously tried to raise a resistance in Pennsylvania against this invasion by royal officials.
The colonist, however, cared little about the proprietary and became critical of Fletcher
only when he tried to reimpose taxation on the colony.
Fletcher formally assumed the reins of government in Pennsylvania in April 1693.
As in the other royal colonies, the council was now appointed by the governor instead
of Being Elected by the People, and laws could now be vetoed by the Crown.
Fletcher's appointments took the Council out of Quaker control. Of the nine new councillors
only four were Quakers and two of these were Keithians. One immediately beneficial result
of the new regime was the freeing of Keith and his friends, and the restoration to Bradford
of His Confiscated Press. With Keith's return to England, the Keithian movement, deprived
of its founder, began to disintegrate. Some Keithians drifted into pietism, others became
Baptist or Anglicans By the late 1690s, the only Keithian remnants
were in Burlington, capital of West New Jersey. In addition, there were some Baptist Quakers
in Pennsylvania. In 1700, Keith himself delivered the lethal blow to the movement by converting
to Anglicanism. Shortly thereafter, he became an ardent Anglican minister and a missionary
to America. It is ironic that in these later years, their individualistic anarchism forgotten,
George Keith and William Bradford, now ardent Anglicans, helped to impose a year's imprisonment
on Reverend Samuel Bounds of Long Island, on grounds of sedition against the established
Anglican Church of New York. Fletcher appointed William Markham as his Lieutenant Governor.
Now the de facto operating head of the colony, Markham was the leader of the old Blackwell
clique. At this time the Quakers were taken up with the Keithian schism and could not
form a fully unified or consistently libertarian opposition to royal or Markhamite rule. Fletcher
did not succeed in imposing a militia on Pennsylvania, although there were some formations in the
in the Delaware counties. He believed that his main mission there was imposing taxation
on Pennsylvania in order to raise funds for the New York war against New France. Fletcher
convened the assembly in May and speciously argued that any taxes it might provide him
for war would go for non-belligerent uses and shall not be dipped in blood. The argument
was deceptive because military funds must always be divided between strictly belligerent
and supportive non-belligerent uses, and any aid to the latter frees additional funds for
the former. Fletcher was able to drive through a tax bill, but not by this reasoning. He
succeeded because he and the Council had the power to reconfirm or not reconfirm all the
the existing laws of Pennsylvania. To save the colony's legal structure, as well as
ward off a threatened annexation by New York, the Assembly finally and reluctantly passed
a tax bill. Taxes had arrived at last in Pennsylvania, and the unique glory of that colony was now
no more. Pennsylvanians, like everyone else, now suffered the burdens of taxation. As might
As might be expected, taxation was still very low. A tax of one penny per pound had been levied on all real and personal property, and a six shilling tax on those without assessed property.
Fletcher, interested less in the principles involved in taxation versus no taxation than in raising money for the war with Canada, was highly disappointed with this trifling amount of money.
He believed it a petty introduction of future supply.
Of the tax raised, half went to Fletcher and the other half to the Crown.
Furthermore, the Assembly refused to agree to vote funds for salaries for the Upper House.
Riding home, Fletcher denounced the pacifism of the unarmed Quakers as well as their resistance to any militia.
The assembly gained in power during the Fletcher regime because the new rules gave it the authority
to initiate legislation. On the other hand, the council, so powerful a body before, now
became a virtual puppet of the governor, functioning as it did on his appointment and renewal.
Between the spring of 1693, when taxes were first imposed, and the assembly session the
In the following spring, the government collected a little over half of its tax quota. Of the
three Delaware counties, Kent paid more than three-quarters of its assessment and Sussex
about one-half. Northernmost New Castle County paid nothing. Of the three counties of Pennsylvania
proper, Philadelphia paid over three-quarters of its assessment, Chester paid 90 percent
and Bucks County paid nothing. In May 1694, Fletcher urged the assembly to increase its
tax revenue for war purposes. But not only did the assembly continue the tax at the same
rate, it also decided to allocate almost half of the revenue for the personal use of Lloyd
and Markham for past services as deputy governors. This infuriated Fletcher, because it promised
was promised to deprive him and the Crown of the whole revenue.
When Fletcher denied that the Assembly could raise taxes except for giving to the Crown,
the Assembly retorted that it could appropriate money as it saw fit.
Fletcher berated the Assembly for neglecting the Crown's request to defend the province
and angrily dissolved the Assembly.
had again gone from Pennsylvania.
Even though Fletcher had managed to enforce a monopoly of ferry service upon the Schuylkill,
a monopoly which had been granted by Pennsylvania, and to suppress two competing ferries, the
dissolution of the assembly now made him lose interest in Pennsylvania. If he could not
To not raise money there, he saw no point in worrying about the affairs of the province.
The colony returned to its former quasi-anarchist state with no taxes and a council that did
little and met infrequently.
Meanwhile, William Penn was campaigning energetically for return of the province to his ownership.
He abjectly promised the Crown that Pennsylvania would be good, that it would levy taxes for
for War, raise a militia and obey royal orders like the other dutiful colonies. He also promised
that he would continue Fletcher's laws and keep Markham, well-liked by the Crown, as
his deputy governor. As a result of this cajolery, the Crown restored Pennsylvania to William
Penn in the summer of 1694. William Penn was as good as his word. By the spring of 1695,
In 1895, William Markham was installed as deputy governor under the restored proprietary.
The people of Pennsylvania had long been independent in spirit from the proprietary. Penn's surrender
of all Quaker principles in order to resume his proprietorship as well as to extract quid
rents was hardly calculated to endear him further to the colony. Reverting back to its
At its first meeting in the spring of 1695, Markham revealed that his major aim was the
old one of Fletcher's, imposing taxation on the colony for prosecuting the war against
New France. The Council proved, however, that the spirit of liberty and independence in
When Pennsylvania had not slackened, it refused to consider any tax or militia bill, and Markham
could only end the session.
The first assembly of the restored regime met in September.
The assembly first indicated that it would levy money for non-militant military needs,
but not for a militia.
When it coupled debate on a tax bill with revision of the Pennsylvania Constitution,
it was particularly interested in safeguarding the recently acquired right of the assembly
to initiate laws. Again, Markham was forced to dissolve the assembly. Pennsylvania remarkably
retained that unique splendor of being a taxless and armsless land. Markham could do little
Markham could do little, and the situation of minimal government continued in this fashion for another year.
In the summer of 1696, the Crown again directed Markham to build up military fortifications in the colony.
Again, the Council refused.
Finally in the fall of 1696, Markham decided to usurp the powers of government.
He decreed a new constitution of his own, since the colonists were not willing to return simply to the Constitution of 1683.
The most flagrant of Markham's usurpations of power was his decision to return to the royal practice of appointing the council members.
The elected council was replaced by his own appointees, chosen frankly from among the large landowners.
It was by this naked usurpation and by the promulgation of his own Markham's Frame as the new Constitution that the Governor was able to push a tax bill through the Assembly.
He was able also to appropriate revenue for the New York War effort as well as an equal sum for his personal benefit.
Under Markham's frame, the assembly kept its right to initiate laws, and the property requirements were lowered in the rural areas and raised in the towns.
And so the Quakers, who led the assembly and who had been able to repulse and ralp the attempts of such despotic governors as Blackwell and Fletcher to impose burdensome taxation on Pennsylvania,
Now succumbed to the usurper Markham.
It is clear that a deal had been made.
Markham obtained the tax bill, and the assembly was assured of the power to initiate legislation.
Furthermore, the Quakers, who dominated the assembly, also won the concession of raising the property requirement in the towns,
Thus excluding the largely non-Quaker urban poor from the vote.
As the persecution of the Keithians first indicated, the Quakers were beginning to abandon
the consistent principles of individual liberty for the alluring perquisites of political power.
A minority group of leaders formed a coalition to oppose the new dispensation.
Making up the coalition were dissidents ranging from Keithians like Robert Turner to old Blackwell henchmen like Griffith Jones.
Significantly, its main leader was Arthur Cook, an assistant to Markham.
Cook had, along with the now deceased Lloyd, led the libertarian opposition to Governor Blackwell.
The opposition gathered a petition in March 1697, signed by over a hundred, and sent to the proprietor letters attacking the major features of Markham's Frame.
The opposition particularly denounced the raising of urban suffrage requirements and the institution of taxation.
The libertarian opposition now contested Markham's frame. A separate set of elections were held in 1697 in Philadelphia County under the old charter of 1683.
When the elected councillors and assemblymen presented themselves and were duly rejected, Robert Turner protested the threat to our ancient rights, liberties and freedom,
system, as well as Quaker domination of the colony's political affairs.
Turner also denounced the tax bill of 1696 and urged that the money seized from its rightful
owners by that unwarrantable, illegal and arbitrary act be forthwith restored.
He noted that people were coerced into paying the tax by threats and trickery, popular resistance
As to the re-imposition of taxation in 1696 is indicated by the fact that little more
than half of the taxis levied were collected, so many citizens refused to pay the tax that
an additional law was passed to enforce collection. Meanwhile the atmosphere of accelerating statism
was reflected in William Penn's messages to Pennsylvania in which he ordered the suppression
and the suppression of all trade that violated the navigation laws and of such immoral businesses as taverns, which were proliferating in Philadelphia, and the structure and mores of Pennsylvania affairs were beginning to take on an uncomfortable resemblance to all the other English colonies in America.
The Holy Experiment was beginning to fade.
Pennsylvania, until now the envy, thus the occasion of hatred, of the other colonies and their royal officials because of its magnetic attractions of individual liberty, peace and absence of taxation, was now falling into step with its neighbors.
In 1696, the year of the Punitive Navigation Act and the creation of the Board of Trade,
new trouble came to Pennsylvania, this time in the form of royal officialdom.
Edward Randolph was particularly incensed at the individualism rampant in Pennsylvania,
so he and Colonel Robert Quarry, appointed judge of the Vice Admiralty Court in Pennsylvania,
launched a determined assault on the colony's freedoms.
The Tory views of Randolph and Quarry recognized no subtle distinctions between the quasi-statism
of Pennsylvania and the Markham frame on the one hand and the libertarian opposition on
the other.
To these royal officials, all Pennsylvania was a pest hole and Markham the leader of
the lawlessness.
And in 1698, a Justice of the Peace issued a writ against Quarry's marshal, forcing
him to return gold confiscated from a merchant engaged in illegal trade. Quarry wrote to
the Board of Trade of Pennsylvania's beloved profitable darling, illegal trade. Quarry went
on to denounce the Pennsylvanians as a perverse, obstinate and turbulent people that will not
not submit to any power or laws but their own. They have so long encouraged and carried
on a most pernicious illegal trade, which hath been so advantageous to them that no
ordinary means can make them part with it. The new threat from the royal officials and
courts easily superseded that posed by the Markham Frame to the liberties of Pennsylvania
and tended to bring new factions to the fore. So it was in the case of Quarry's Marshall.
David Lloyd led the prosecution and became a popular hero by denouncing admiralty courts
as being greater enemies to the rights and liberties of the people than ship taxes in
the days of Charles I. Lloyd was censured by the council for his remarks.
In the same year, 1698, the Pennsylvania Assembly courageously passed a law granting accused
violators of the Navigation Acts the common law privileges of trial by jury, thus going
counter to imperial decisions.
William Penn, anxious to continue toting to the Crown in order to keep his proprietary,
Mason to veto the law, but in 1699 Quarry reported that he was forced for reasons of
safety to hold admiralty court sessions 40 miles from Philadelphia.
Furthermore, Quarry complained no one in Pennsylvania deigned to pay any attention to the decisions
and orders of the admiralty court.
Finally though, the Randolph-Quarry campaign of vilification of Pennsylvania took effect.
William Penn was ordered by the Board of Trade to return to Pennsylvania to take charge of
the colony and force the navigation laws, cooperate with the Admiralty Courts, remove
Markham from the post of Lieutenant Governor and David Lloyd from the Office of Attorney
General and establish a militia in the colony.
Penn agreed to return and arrived in December 1699.
From the time of his return, Penn tried his best to placate the Tories. Quarry was made
Attorney General of Pennsylvania, and the Marshal of the Admiralty Court was appointed
under Sheriff of the Colony. But Quarry, Randolph, and their allies on the Board of Trade were
implacable and attempted to eliminate all the proprietary and self-governing colonies
in America. Penn would finally be forced to return to England in late 1701 to fight this
enormous extension of imperial control, and he was the main force behind the Bill's defeat.
Penn carried to Pennsylvania Crown orders to impose on Pennsylvania a tyranny that would
be subservient to the Crown. Obediently, Penn vetoed the Act for Jury Trial for Navigation
Act violations, and summarily removed from office Markham, David Lloyd, and other leaders
of the popular resistance against the Navigation Acts. Not only was Lloyd ousted as Attorney
General and Court Clerk, he was also prevented from assuming his elective seat on the Council.
An act against illegal trade was also passed. Concessions, already mentioned, were made
made to Quarry and the Admiralty Courts. Penn moved close to the conditions of the other
colonies by levying duties on imports. He did not dare attempt to create a militia, but
he did maintain a military watch at the mouth of the Delaware Bay. Penn's actions soon
engendered strong opposition in the colony. The Quakers resented Penn's treatment of
of Lloyd and the other popular leaders, and the assembly only reluctantly granted tax
monies for payment of a salary to Penn. The people of Delaware also resented the act to
repress the illegal trade. With the former constitution of the colony in abeyance, Penn
quickened his reactionary course by deciding to appoint his council rather than have it
In protest, several members of the Council refused the appointment and were instead elected
in the fall of 1700 to the Assembly, heading this move with Joseph Grodin, who was elected
as Speaker of the Assembly.
At the summer 1701 meeting of the Assembly, Penn commended the King's request for £350
for military fortifications of New York.
But the assembly resumed its old role as champion of the colony's liberties by rejecting the
request. The Delaware counties protested sending any tax money for armed forces in New York.
Rather, any such funds should be kept for their own defense. Penn's return also meant a renewed
assault upon the liberties of the colonists from yet another quarter. The imposition of
A Feudal Quit Rents by the Proprietary
Though the assembly voted Penn a huge grant of £2,000 in 1700 to be collected from property taxes,
the colonists were always reluctant to pay quit rents.
Penn appointed his aide, James Logan, as receiver general and secretary of the colony,
and Logan was to enforce payment of the quit rents.
Moreover, the duties on imports levied in 1700 also went to Penn's private purse,
as did another tax on the retailing of alcoholic beverages.
The last general assembly to meet under Penn's personal rule convened in the fall of 1701.
It was during this assembly that the representatives of the Delaware counties walked out.
Delaware secession had long been brewing.
The differences between Delaware and Pennsylvania were striking.
Pennsylvania was predominantly Quaker, growing rapidly and flourishing economically.
Delaware was largely Dutch Calvinist, Swedish Lutheran and Anglican, and was comparatively stagnant.
Delaware, having none of the pacifist ideals of Pennsylvania, desired a militia.
As soon as Penn arrived, Newcastle County in Delaware refused to send representatives to the Pennsylvania Assembly.
Now, with the Delaware representatives walking out and Penn proposing to defend his proprietary against royal assault,
William Penn decided to grant Delaware its secession from Pennsylvania.
of Pennsylvania. Delaware took the step in 1704, and from then on the two colonies were
completely separate, except for a common governor appointed by the proprietary.
The assembly continued to be the focal point of resistance to Penn and his exactions. It
passed a bill to give Freeman the right to bring court action against Penn and other
The assembly also favored a bill to repeal the liquor tax, but Penn insisted that the
revenue must then be raised by some other form of taxation. Penn still had the task
of resolving the constitutional quarrels of the colony. A new constitution, the Charter
Charter of Privileges was finally approved by Assembly and Council and signed by Penn
at the end of October 1701. This charter replaced both the old Charter of 1683 and the Markham
Frame, and was to govern Pennsylvania for the remainder of the colony's existence.
The Assembly kept its cherished power to initiate legislation, but significantly the Council
The Council was now to be appointed by the proprietary Governor and was thus taken permanently out of popular control.
The Council was now, as in most other royal colonies, a puppet agency of the Governor,
instead of a formidable elective body capable of checking the Chief Executive.
Furthermore, the Governor retained the power to veto all legislation.
The assembly was still elected according to limited suffrage with modest property restrictions.
The new charter also included guarantees of liberty of conscience as well as procedural
guarantees for property against arbitrary attack by the governor.
Pennsylvania now truly resembled its fellows, especially the royal colonies.
It now joined them in possessing a proprietary governor outside the colonist's control and
a council appointed by the governor and suffered the agonies of a network of taxes, duties
and quitterance.
It too faced the threats of royal bureaucracy and enforcement of the crippling navigation
laws.
Apart from a continued reluctance to arm a peaceful policy toward the Indians and the
In the limiting of capital punishment strictly to murderers, there were few traces of the
unique holy experiment that had been established in Pennsylvania. Even the rational limitation
of capital punishment to proportionate retribution against the crime of murder was destined to
disappear in 1718 when Pennsylvania adopted the English Criminal Code, which provided
for a much broader application of capital punishment.
However, Pennsylvania continued to be unique
in its widespread opposition to Negro slavery.
As early as 1688, German Quakers, headed by Francis Pistorius,
had attacked slavery, and a yearly meeting of Quakers in 1696
at least urged discouragement
of further importation of Negro slaves.
The Keithians had gone much further, declaring in 1693 that slavery was theft and opposed
to the golden rule, and warning that it was only moral to buy Negroes for the purpose
of freeing them. The enormously greater freedom that had prevailed so much longer in Pennsylvania
than in the other colonies had given, however, the colony a tremendous push toward growth
and Prosperity, Farmers and Merchants had prospered. Philadelphia with a population
of 5,000 in 1700 had begun the remarkable rise that was to make it one of America's
foremost cities. That city had already become the commercial port for the farmers not only
of Pennsylvania but of West New Jersey as well. In 1690, Governor Fletcher of New York
New York admitted that the town of Philadelphia in 14 years' time has become nearly equal
to the city of New York in trade and riches, an unwitting tribute to the propulsive powers
of individual freedom unencumbered by taxes and restrictions as over against the crippling
effects of monopoly and high taxation on the older colony.
It was not long before the unique Pennsylvania attribute of pacifism was also to wither away.
After Penn's return to England, James Logan remained as builder of the Proprietary Party,
which favored taxation and quit rents and was willing to abandon the Quaker resistance
to war and to an armed militia. The leader of the popular Libertarian Party, dominant
in the Assembly was the Welsh Quaker David Lloyd. The Assembly consistently resisted
proprietary demands for a militia. It did allow a voluntary one, which could not sustain
itself. Finally, William Penn brought an end to the opposition by, one, removing from the
Governor's chair the hated John Evans, who had tried to raise a war panic by false scares
of French and Indian Invasion, and who had illegally imposed a tax by Delaware on Philadelphia
shipping, powder money, and two, threatening the colonists that he would sell his proprietary
rights to the Crown. Under this blackmail threat, the election of 1710 brought complete
victory to the Logan-Penn forces. Under Logan's aegis, Penn quickly voted the Crown the large
The Large Sum of £2,000, which was expected to be used for military purposes against New France.