Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

against Canada. Franklin went so far as to write the request, and to push
through the Assembly an aid appropriation of 10,000 pounds, thus earning the
praise and gratitude of the British Crown.
General Braddock's appropriation, however, had been defeated on the rock
of the paper-money dispute. Braddock's disastrous defeat at Fort Duquesne
now forced Governor Morris to summon a special session of the Assembly in
the summer, to renew a request for aid. Subsequent to Braddock's attack and
rout, the Delaware Indians, allied to the French, retaliated by turning on their
tormentors, the frontier Scots, as well as against the Pennsylvania government
that had driven them off their lands. Pennsylvania was beginning to reap the
reward for its aggression against the Delawares. The Scotch-Irish demanded
arms and ammunition from the Assembly under virtual threat of mob invasion
of Philadelphia. Under this pressure, the Assembly now decided to grant
no less than 50,000 pounds, to be raised by a twelve-pence-per-pound and
twenty-shilling-per-person tax for two years on all real and personal property
in Pennsylvania. Morris, however, was again forced to reject the bill, this time
because there was no exemption for the proprietors' estates.
Here was the perfect issue for Franklin to exploit. Now Franklin, carrying
the Quakers along with him, could quite cogently berate the proprietary for
endangering the war effort by refusing to pay the very taxes that it sought to
impose on its subjects. The frame of reference of the debate had been shifted
away from problems of pacifism, and indeed of old-fashioned Quaker individualism
and opposition to taxation. As Morris shrewdly wrote at the end of
1755: "Franklin has views that they [the Quakers} know nothing of ... the
truth, I believe, is that he is courting them in order to distress you [the
proprietary], and, at the same time, leading them into measures that will in
the end deprive them of any share in the administration."*
At the end of the year, Franklin reintroduced a war-fund bill, of 60,000
pounds, to be issued in paper money and redeemed in property taxes, with no
exemption for Penn's property. A group of principled Quakers rallied to protest
the measure as "inconsistent with peaceable testimony," but they could
muster only seven dissenting votes against passage in the Assembly. Franklin's
purposes were greatly aided by the renegacy of the Quaker Speaker, Isaac
Norris, who had completely abandoned the peace policy. The purists in the
Assembly were led by James Pemberton, brother of the beloved "king of the
Quakers," the prominent merchant Israel Pemberton. Apart from this handful,
the Quakers had been taken into camp. Eventually, when Norris again
objected, Franklin had the bill repassed without taxing the proprietary. However,
the Crown was now stimulated to force the proprietor to contribute
5,000 pounds "voluntarily" to the Pennsylvania war effort. This "gift," nevertheless,
was highly dubious, as it was to come from the arrears in largely
*Quoted in John J. Zimmerman, "Benjamin Franklin and the Quaker Party, 175 5l75¢,"
William and Mary Quarterly (I9ÄO): 305.
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