new phase began with a dispute in regard to the expences of what were called Indian Affairs; by which was meant the expence of keeping up friendly relations with the Indians, and especially of making the considerable presents that were always incidental to negotiations for the purchasing of land from the tribes. The Assembly, as the other charges of administration grew, now submitted that the Proprietors ought to bear a share of this particular burden. How reasonable the request was, will be understood when it is explained that the people had at an earlier time. conceded to the Proprietors an exclusive right— which does not seem to have belonged to them originally of purchasing lands from the Indians. How valuable, also, that right was, will be understood when it is added that, on one occasion alone, the Penns bought for £700 a stretch of lands which they valued at £3,000,000 in their own land-selling negotiations with the colonists. Nevertheless, they stoutly and angrily resisted the demand that they should help to pay the expences incurred in securing for them such vast advantages. If there were such expences, the people, and not they, must be taxed to pay them. This chapter of the dispute was still unclosed when the second and greater one opened. By this second one, Pennsylvania is brought into connection with the great currents of history and the rivalries of mighty nations. England and France were technically at peace with one another from 1748 to 1756; but in North America a war, in which much was achieved and more was suffered, was in active progress from about 1752. Such a war not only threatened England with the loss of her colonies, but threatened the colonists with more than the loss of their homes. For war in that part of the world, in those days, brought the Indian, and all the horrors that Indian warfare meant. No colony

was more exposed to the visitations of this unchristian foe than the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania. Therefore the inhabitants hardly needed the commands of the Home Government, which were emphatic and urgent enough, that they (and all other loyal subjects. in America) should put themselves in a state of defence. But the Proprietors regarded such conditions of public peril as but favourable opportunities for getting the Assembly to abandon some claim of its own, or to ratify some claim of theirs, which might at the moment be in dispute; and the method was, to permit nothing to be done until they had their way. So bill after bill, appropriating money for war purposes-or, as it was called, "for the King's use -was now vetoed by the Governor, because the estates of the Penns had not been exempted from the taxation imposed for the defence of their property and everyone else's. The story cannot be followed out in these pages. Suffice it, that the Assembly conducted its disputation with these arrogant and foolish Proprietors in a way that would have been creditable to a greater Parliament, in not its meanest ages; and knew how to be forcible and trenchant without loss of moderation, and constitutionally respectful without abating a tittle of the respect which it very properly had for itself. This strong quality was introduced into the deliberations and the documents of Assembly by Benjamin Franklin; who, as leader of the popular party, and the most gifted writing-man in America, was virtually Secretary for the People during ten years of ever-renewed controversy. In his Autobiography he understates, as usual, the extent to which his personality was a prevailing power, an inspiration and a defence, to the province in those days. Even the Proprietors at last recognised that he was of some importance; and if this knowledge only prompted them to approach him with a bribe, the blunder was quite in character

and did him no damage. The colonists expressed their recognition of his value in a more worthy way. For when a point had been reached at which the alternatives presented to them were, either, to accept finally a position of legal vassalage to the Penns, or else allow the defenceless province to go under altogether then they decided that Benjamin Franklin, their wisest and strongest, was the man to take their cause across the seas for settlement, and submit it to the judgment of greater powers in the English world than even Thomas and Richard Penn.

The last pages of the Autobiography tell of his arrival in England, and indicate rather than explain what he effected. To explain fully would require more space than is available here, but his account may be supplemented a little. In the first place he had come upon a more unwelcome errand than he was aware of when he set out. Colonial affairs had lately begun to receive a good deal of attention from the Home Government, but the tendency of that attention was by no means favourable to colonial ideas. Ministers and officials had discovered that matters were rather confused in that part of the world, and had decided very wisely that they must be put in better order. Unfortunately, the putting in order was to consist in the colonies being taken in hand and 66 put in their places;" which they were supposed to have wandered away from in dreams of unqualified self-government and such like delusions. In a word, governmental and bureaucratic ideas were having their turn just then in what we may call, by courtesy, official thought. It was likely to be an ill turn for Pennsylvania in particular, since that colony was not a favourite with official thinkers. In the second place, special steps were presently taken by the Proprietors to secure a pronouncement in favour of their own claims as against the Assembly; which were just the kind of claims the Home Government

was itself inclined to set up against Assemblies one and all. The occasion was this. Governor Denny, not being at a safe distance in England while the French were marching and the Indians prowling about the frontier of every colony, was in a position to realise what the course which he was commanded to take was likely to lead to. He had, therefore, as became a soldier and a man of sense, broken his instructions and given his assent to bills involving taxation of the Proprietary estates. When this was

The

known in England, a new Governor was at once despatched to take his place. But alas! Governor Hamilton did what Governor Denny had done; so the only remedy remaining was for the poor Penns to invoke the King of England to protect their pockets against the tax-gatherer. The custom of the constitution required that all colonial Acts of Assembly, after being duly passed, should be forwarded to England for the King's assent. Penns now made a test case of one of those above referred to, and appealed to the King in Council to disallow it. In June 1760 the committee to which the matter was referred rendered a report such as the brothers Penn might themselves have written ; so emphatic it was in its vindication of their claims and its denunciation of the Assembly. And not of the Pennsylvania Assembly alone. For, going out into general reflections that were intended as a reprimand and a warning to all other Assemblies in America, it contained much about "attempts to set up a democracy in place of His Majesty's Government"; about the constitution being "brought back to its proper principles "; about "restoring to the Crown, in the person of the Proprietaries, its just prerogatives" in a word, the note of the time resounded menacingly throughout the dread and decisive document. Franklin was in the act of setting out for a holiday when a copy of this report, or

precise information as to its character, reached him. He at once turned back and addressed himself to the task of getting the thing set aside before its stupid thunders had raised, as they would have raised, a real storm. By what means he wrought during the next three months we do not know; but by the time when the King in Council sat to dispose of this matter on September 2, 1760, wisdom and Franklin had prevailed to such effect that the points at issue between Assembly and Proprietors were decided almost without qualification in the Assembly's favour. As for the interview with Lord Mansfield in a back room (referred to in the last lines of the Autobiography), it seems to have been a little theatrical manœuvre by which the Council "saved its face," as the modern diplomatic slang expresses it. The Council also saved in this way the feelings of its over-hasty committee, by affecting to believe that in securing such guarantees as Franklin was now giving it was securing something quite new and important, something that entirely changed the aspect of the dispute !

Thus after three years of waiting, he was able to bring to a prosperous conclusion the main business on which he had come. He was detained in England two years longer by other colonial business; but this five years' absence from home was a time pleasantly and usefully spent. Usefully, even from the point of view of imperial affairs; for it would seem that to Franklin, in a degree, we are indebted for the addition of Canada to the British Empire. He shared keenly in the public interests of that time, and was very emphatically what would be called nowadays an Imperialist. Being struck by the futility of England carrying on her war against France in the heart of Germany-where nothing could be gained by her in the end, and not much lost by France, save the winning and losing of