Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

pains, jeered and cursed at every stop along their long march. At Philadelphia,
soldiers successfuly defied the governor's orders and refused to admit
the Indians to the barracks. Finally almost lynched by a mob, but protected by
a cordon of Quakers, the Indians found a camp near the city. The Moravian
Indians were shipped to New York by the frightened Philadelphians, but the
governors of New York and New Jersey ordered the refugees out of their
provinces, and the hapless Indians were forced to return once again to Philadelphia.
Now marching several hundred strong, the Paxton Boys thundered that
they would slaughter not only all the Moravian Indians but also any Quakers
who might stand in their path. Under such provocation, the Quakers of Germantown
rose up in arms to block the invaders' way and formed volunteer
militia, again under Franklin's aegis. Certainly the situation was enough to
stretch absolute pacifism to the breaking point. While the Indians were successfully
defended after several days on the brink of conflict, Franklin was
treating the Paxton Boys rather as citizens to be forgiven, with grievances to
be pondered, than as murderers. Furthermore, Governor Penn and the Council
added to the climate of official complicity by placing a bounty on Indian
scalps. The Paxton Boys disbanded and left for home, after unchecked terrorization
and plundering of the citizens of Philadelphia. As for the Moravian
Indians, they were forced to remain for a year in the Philadelphia barracks,
while negotiations were being completed. There, a third of the Indians died
from smallpox before they could finally return home.
Following the march of the Paxton Boys, there ensued a furious pamphlet
war between the two sides. The Ulster Scots blamed Quaker pacifism for the
colony's troubles with the Indians, while the pro-Quaker writers noted that
the peace policy with the Indians had succeeded for three-quarters of a century
until seriously weakened by the government and by the excesses of the
Ulster Scots.
One significant point of grievance, unrelated to the Indian affairs, was
raised in the Declaration of Grievances, submitted to the government by two
leaders of the Paxton Boys, Matthew Smith and James Gibson. This point,
heading the list of grievances, was the underrepresentation in the Pennsylvania
Assembly of the frontier counties relative to the older areas nearer Philadelphia.
In a democracy, the natural, inherent tendency is to overrepresent
older areas and underrepresent the new, unless there is, as in colonial Massachusetts,
a built-in method for enlarging representation for the new areas.
And then the older areas naturally wish to maintain their advantage, and
explosive sectional conflict can ensue unless the apportionment is swiftly
adjusted to the new pattern of population. This tendency had been borne out
in Pennsylvania: the five western frontier counties (Lancaster, York, Berks,
Northampton, and Cumberland) had an allotted representation of little more
than one-third that of the eastern areas (Philadelphia City, Philadelphia
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