Volume 3, Chapter 11, Reaction in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania's protests were among the most anemic in the colonies.
A major reason was undoubtedly the restraining influence of Franklin and Jackson.
The Pennsylvania Assembly, in September 1764, declared its opposition to taxation by Parliament,
But was too timid to follow its sister colonies and send the protest to parliament or the
crown.
Instead, the assembly quickly, quietly, and privately sent its conclusions to Richard
Jackson.
For a while it even promised to send Jackson an alternate plan for raising a colonial revenue,
Probably the scheme of the ever-helpful Franklin that would pay interest to the crown on a
new all-colonial paper currency.
Perhaps the major reason for Pennsylvania's timidity as well as Franklin's was the scheming
of the non-pacifist Quaker oligarchy of eastern Pennsylvania, with whom Franklin was allied
to perpetuate their control of the colony.
As the Germans and the Ulster Scots poured into western Pennsylvania, the older Quaker
settlers became a distinct minority of the population, yet their districts still commanded
a majority representation in the assembly.
Thus, the three Quaker counties of Chester, Box, and Philadelphia, excluding the city
of Philadelphia, had far less than half of Pennsylvania's population in 1760, yet they
sent 24 representatives to the assembly out of 36. Demands for correcting the increasing
Inequality of Pennsylvania Representation were mounting, and the Quaker oligarchs calculated
that if the province shifted from proprietary to royal government, they could manage to
dominate a crown-appointed council and thereby keep control of the government. Hence, Benjamin
Franklin, appointed as Pennsylvania's agent in London in the fall of 1764, to press for
changed to royal government, wrote from London that English Quakers would back
the cause and thus prevent their friends in Pennsylvania falling totally under
the domination of Presbyterians. Seeking important favors from the Crown, the
Quaker-dominated Pennsylvania Assembly felt that it could not press any
The principle yielded to the subservience of the courtier.
In this trend, one great leader arose to take a determined libertarian position against both crown and proprietary.
The lone voice was John Dickinson, a young lawyer who in May 1764 warned of the blaze of royal authority that would follow replacement of the proprietary.
Only Dickinson warned clearly of the impending aggrandizement of the imperial power and of
the dangers of a British standing army. He also pointed out that the proprietors had
cooperated closely with royal policies and therefore that the Crown could hardly serve
as a relative paladin of liberty. While denouncing the exactions and evils of proprietary rule,
Dickinson hailed Pennsylvania's unique liberties, complete religious freedom, absence of test
oaths, a unicameral elected legislature unhampered by an appointed council, absolute assembly
control over its own meetings, and annual elections. In contrast, Joseph Galloway sought
about the blessings of royal liberty, and Ben Franklin proudly and accurately proclaimed
that he had constantly and uniformly advanced the measures of the Crown ever since I had
any influence in the province.
John Dickinson's emergence as head of the liberal opposition to the tyrannical moves
of the British Crown occasioned a new political line-up in Pennsylvania.
On one side was an anti-royal coalition of western Ulster-Scott Presbyterians, urban
Philadelphians, and a handful of proprietary men.
On the other was a conservative party headed by Galloway and Franklin, based on the non-pacifist
Quakers of the eastern counties surrounding Philadelphia.
Professor Jacobson concludes, for John Dickinson, 1764, marked the beginning of his important
political leadership. His arguments in 1764 showed not essential conservatism, as historians
have so frequently charged, but a belief in the more radical idea that fundamental rights
could not be altered without the consent of the governed. An idea that clearly foreshadowed
the American position in the revolutionary crisis of succeeding years. Dickinson's early
and perceptive analysis supports his own later claim that his stand against royal government
marked the beginning of the revolutionary struggles in Pennsylvania.