While these negotiations were proceeding, some of the Scotch-Irish amused themselves by practicing with their rifles at the weather vane, a figure of a cock, on the steeple of the old Lutheran church in Germantown--an unimportant incident, it is true, but one revealing the conditions and character of the time as much as graver matters do.The old weather vane with the bullet marks upon it is still preserved.About thirty of these same riflemen were invited to Philadelphia and were allowed to wander about and see the sights of the town.The rest returned to the frontier.As for their list of grievances, not one of them was granted except, strange and sad to relate, the one which asked for a scalp bounty.The Governor, after the manner of other colonies, it must be admitted, issued the long desired scalp proclamation, which after offering rewards for prisoners and scalps, closed by saying, "and for the scalp of a female Indian fifty pieces of eight." William Penn's Indian policy had been admired for its justice and humanity by all the philosophers and statesmen of the world, and now his grandson, Governor of the province, in the last days of the family's control, was offering bounties for women's scalps.
Franklin while in England had succeeded in having the proprietary lands taxed equally with the lands of the colonists.But the proprietors attempted to construe this provision so that their best lands were taxed at the rate paid by the people on their worst.This obvious quibble of course raised such a storm of opposition that the Quakers, joined by classes which had never before supported them, and now forming a large majority, determined to appeal to the Government in England to abolish the proprietorship and put the colony under the rule of the King.In the proposal to make Pennsylvania a Crown colony there was no intention of confiscating the possessions of the proprietors.It was merely the proprietary political power, their right to appoint the Governor, that was to be abolished.This right was to be absorbed by the Crown with payment for its value to the proprietors; but in all other respects the charter and the rights and liberties of the people were to remain unimpaired.Just there lay the danger.An act of Parliament would be required to make the change and, having once started on such a change, Parliament, or the party in power therein, might decide to make other changes, and in the end there might remain very little of the original rights and liberties of the colonists under their charter.It was by no means a wise move.But intense feeling on the subject was aroused.Passionate feeling seemed to have been running very high among the steady Quakers.In this new outburst the Quakers had the Scotch-Irish on their side, and a part of the Churchmen.The Germans were divided, but the majority enthusiastic for the change was very large.
There was a new alignment of parties.The eastern Presbyterians, usually more or less in sympathy with the Scotch-Irish, broke away from them on this occasion.These Presbyterians opposed the change to a royal governor because they believed that it would be followed by the establishment by law of the Church of England, with bishops and all the other ancient evils.Although some of the Churchmen joined the Quaker side, most of them and the most influential of them were opposed to the change and did good work in opposing it.They were well content with their position under the proprietors and saw nothing to be gained under a royal governor.There were also not a few people who, in the increase of the wealth of the province, had acquired aristocratic tastes and were attached to the pleasant social conditions that had grown up round the proprietary governors and their followers; and there were also those whose salaries, incomes, or opportunities for wealth were more or less dependent on the proprietors retaining the executive offices and the appointments and patronage.
