Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1876-05-17
Philadelphia Quakers and Tories.

IcCoTus vi tuc last century, especially III
Westcett's invaluable History OF Phila-
delphid, which is most vivid panorama
of the past, drawn with a Flemish min
uteness and accuracy, how the disagree
ment with the mother country, Begin
ming with a murmur of discomfort in
the outer business circles, angry talk in
counting-rOOms and club-houses, scarce
heard in domestic life, rose suddenly
into the storm that racked the little
colony to its foundations, and brought
ruin and death close to every home and
every woman and child. The Penn
sylvania Assembly acted tardily in re-
senting the passage of the Stamp Act.
Massachusetts, and Virginia famed with
Indignation for months before the
placid Quaker town saw fit to join
them. When, however, the Royal Char
iotte, having on board the stamped
papers, hove in sight, all the ships i'm
the Philadelphia harbor dropped their
flags to half-mast, and all the bells were
tolled as for the death of Liberty. Com
mittees waited daily on Hughes, the
stamp agent, demanding his resigna-
ton; but he wisely kept himself in bed,
as at the point of death, and so shunted
the popular abuse on to Franklin i'm
England, who was his friend, and, it
was supposed, the friend of the Stamp
Act. The newspapers came out next
day in mourning for their own ap-
preaching demise, Bradford's Journal
bearing death's-head and coffin, and
the words, ''The Pennsylvania Journal
departed this life October 81, 1865, of a
stamp in her yitals. Aged twenty-three
years"
The history of Philadelphia for the
next three years is the history of an ex-
ceptionally temperate, prudent cOmmu-
nifty, slowly rousing into a temperate,
prudent resistance to injustice. If they
were more tardy than any other colony
in this resistance, it must be remem-
bered that the injustice touched them
less keenly. They had always been
ruled, in effect, not by England, but by
the Penns and the Governors appointed
by the Penns; and although there was
an incessant squabble going on between
the Province and the Proprietaries, the
rule had been easy and just, and Phila-
delphia knew that it had been so. There
can be no doubt that her leading men
were drawn with extreme reluctance
into the violent separation from the
mother conutry. The Quakers threw
their full lightweight of inertia against
the revol ItiOnary movements of Massa-
chusetts and Virginia radicals, for
which We can scarcely blame them.
They had come here to find not only
religious liberty, but chance to rise
socially and politically, and had gained
all they sought. They were firmly
seated on the soil. and were the ruling
power. They were asked now to en-
gage i'm a bloody war, which their
principles forbade, to give up an author
ity which they had used with wisdom
and justice, and to give it up into the
hands of people alien to themselves in
belief, habits, and education. Men who
were not Friends. but were associated
with the proprietary government, and
the great shipping merchants, to whom
prolonged war with Great Britain
threatened ruin, were, from evident
reasons, anxious to temporize, to use all
placable means before resorting to the
sword, when, indeed. they did not
openly take sides, as was often the case,
with the mother country.
Apart from these, there were, how
ever, enough men of force of character
and broad political apprehension to
carry Philadelphia, at least nOminally,
to the side of the Wings; and soon after,
when she became the chief point of the
struggle Simply because she was the
most central and important town of the
cOionies), the sudden influx of the
leaders of the Revolution-officers and
men who crowded into the capital to
make money or to spend it-pushed the
Quaker-class and Tory families tempo
rarily to the wall. During the tine
when Philadelphia claims historic i'm
portance, her old rulers, with few ex-
ceptions, yielded their place to strangers.
Magdzine for Nay.