11. Reaction in Pennsylvania

0:00Volume 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.

1:00Perhaps 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

2:38the 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.

3:26In 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.

5:02John 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.