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Updated: June 4, 2025
The only reply to their message came in the pointed and intelligible shape of an act "taxing the proprietary estate in common with the estates of the people." Much disturbed, the proprietaries now obtained a hearing before the king in council. They requested his majesty to set aside this tax act, and several other acts which had been passed within two years by the Assembly.
In 1665, Albemarle had been increased by fresh emigrants from New England and by a colony of ship-builders from the Bermudas, who lived contentedly with Stevens as chief magistrate, under a very wise and simple form of government. A council of twelve, six named by the proprietaries, and six chosen by the assembly.
It was a long while before the Assembly found leisure to attend to that engagement of their agents which stipulated for an investigation to see whether the proprietaries had not been unduly and excessively assessed.
In October, 1763, Governor Hamilton was superseded by John Penn, nephew of the proprietary Thomas Penn. "Never," said Franklin, "did any administration open with a more promising prospect than this of Governor Penn. He assured the people in his first speeches of the proprietaries' paternal regard for them, and their sincere dispositions to do everything that might promote their happiness.
This province was originally settled by Quakers, under the auspices of the celebrated William Penn, whose descendants are still proprietaries of the country. Philadelphia, the capital, stands on a tongue of land at the confluence of the two navigable rivers, the Delaware and Sculkel, disposed in the form of a regular oblong, and designed by the original plan to extend from the one to the other.
Thomas and Richard Penn, the present proprietaries, had debarred their deputy, the Governor, both by the terms of his commission and by special instruction, from consenting to such taxation, and had laid him under heavy bonds to secure his obedience. Thus there was another side to the question than that of the Assembly; though our American writers have been slow to acknowledge it.
As usual in English and Anglo-American communities, it was a quarrel over dollars, or rather over pounds sterling, a question of taxation, which was producing the alienation. At bottom, there was the trouble which always pertains to absenteeism; the proprietaries lived in England, and regarded their vast American estate, with about 200,000 white inhabitants, only as a source of revenue.
The early times were taken up with the wrestle with the forest, with the Indians, with Spanish alarms, with incompetent governors, with the Lords Proprietaries' Fundamental Constitutions, and with the restrictions which English Navigation Laws imposed upon English colonies.
Franklin took an active part in this contest, and threw all the weight of his authority in favor of the petition; but in the election which followed in 1764 the combination of the aristocrats, who sided with the proprietaries, and of the fanatics, who favored the Paxton uprising, was too strong for him, and he was not returned.
Huguenots, Independents, Quakers, dissenters of many kinds, found on the whole refuge and harbor. In every colony soon began the struggle by the dominant color and caste toward political liberty. King, Company, Lords Proprietaries, might strive to rule from over the seas. But the new land fast bred a practical rough freedom.
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