Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

uncollectible quitrents. The upshot was that the Quakers had agreed to a large
war budget without even gaining the principle of taxing the proprietary
itself. Hearing also that hundreds of violent Scots frontiersmen were marching
on Philadelphia, the Assembly increased its own appropriation by 5,000
pounds.
The Quaker Assembly not only assented supinely to a huge military program,
but also was induced to agree for the first time to an official governmental
militia for Pennsylvania. The militia bill was introduced by Franklin
at the end of 1755. Franklin won Quaker support by proclaiming the voluntarism
of the militia; no one, Quaker or non-Quaker, was to be conscripted
into its service who might be "conscientiously scrupulous." Furthermore, the
volunteer soldiers could democratically choose their own officers. The Quakers,
however, seemed to have forgotten that their principle was to oppose any governmental
militia, any coercive body imposed by the state. So shrewdly did
Franklin maneuver that this unprecedented bill passed the Assembly in two
days with only four pacifist Quakers in opposition—again led by the courageous
James Pemberton.
Thus, in less than a year's time, Benjamin Franklin had succeeded in radically
transforming the politics and policies of the Quaker party and of the
Assembly. He had managed to work himself into the party leadership on a
program of war expenditures and a militia, by leading the Assembly into a
political struggle with the proprietary and its appointed executive.* The pure
Quakers, devoted to the principle of peace and individualism, had been isolated
and routed. The Pembertons organized a petition urging that Quakers
"suffer" rather than pay war taxes, but this scarcely succeeded in turning the
tide.
In the meanwhile, the proprietary party was pursuing an old dream of the
younger Penns: the barring of the Quakers and their supporters from the
Assembly in Pennsylvania. The new campaign to gain parliamentary legislation
to this effect was launched in London in early 1755 by the Reverend
William Smith, who urged a Test Oath for willingness to fight, as well as a
disenfranchisement for all Germans until "they have a sufficient knowledge of
our language and constitution." He also proposed the outlawing of all newspapers
or journals printed in any foreign language. In the fall a petition for
barring Quakers from the Assembly was circulated in Pennsylvania, led by
William Allen. Alarmed, the English Quakers, a group prominent in English
affairs, counterattacked with sustained pressure. In hearings before the Board
of Trade, the successful war-supply and militia bills were used as evidence
that the Quakers were no longer pacifist, and therefore, no longer a source of
worry. The board and the Privy Council, however, disallowed the Pennsylvania
militia bill in the summer of 1756, because it dared to allow exemptions
to conscientious objectors.
*See ibid., p. 307.
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