The Carlisle independent., 1909-07-01

ence hall should have been made ready for the oc- cupany of the Provincial assembly and the gov ernor's council virtually at the exact time when the colonies of Great Britain in America began to feel their growing strength sufficiently to ln- duce them to insist more than before upon the right to be specially mindful of their own in- terests. It was only quarter of century after the "old Liberty Bell" was cast by patriotic ar tisans in this city that it was used to gather the people to hear the proclamation. by order of the continental congress- of the absolute political sep aration of the 13 colonies from the mother coun- try The state house sheltered not only the continental congress during many critical ses- sons but also the supreme council of the feder- ation of the United States the constitutional con- vention of 17S7 the supreme court of the United States and the provincial and state legislature of Pennsylvania in that long period of the con- cepton, birth and infancy of the western repub- lie. Every man of any distinction whatever in that great epoch. from Andrew Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin to Lafayette and Pulaski, passed through it's portals. It is the silent surviv- ing witness of a stupendous past so stupendous indeed that hardly anything is wonderful than the absolute simplicity of the austere stage setting of those dramatic actions which indirectly transformed the whole political world.
 William Penn's council of state first met in George Guests unfinished house near the mouth of Dock creek afterward called the Blue Anchor tavern. Settlers at that time were living in along the west bank of the Delaware riv-
 
 Swedes church at Wicaco, down the river, and in William Penn's house in Laetitia court, the same which now stands in Fairmount park until it removed to the state house in 1747. The Provincial assembly probably sat in the first rough meeting house erected for the worship of Friends shortly after Penn's arrival, and then in the later one on Front street known as the Bank Meeting house But it also sat elsewhere some times in houses that were erected for private use
 It was in January, 1729, that the assembly, awake finally to the need of a suitable provincial capitol voted e2,0 900 (s10,000), toward it's and appropriated the same out of an issue of pa per money which it had just authorized William Allen, who afterward of Phiiadelphias most famous mayors and became a justice of the supreme court, acted as the agent of the province in thR chase of the lots of ground on Chest nut stI0 from Fifth to Sixth, and extending halfway Wback toward Walnut street, which formed the chosen site. It not until 1769 that the remainder of the square was acquired Dr. Kearsley, the architect of Christ church. aspired also to design the state house and is said to have been disgruntled because he was not permitted to do Thomas Lawrence, Andrew Hamilton and Dr. John Kearsley composed the building con- mittee.
 The main structure, minus the great tower, which had not yet been built, in rough state when, in September, 1736, William Allen, the mayor, gave banquet and frolic in the Long room in the second story which to be the of so many later revelries and solemnites as we'll
 Public contractors were dilatory in those days as in these, and it was not until 1745 that the room of the assembly in the state house was com pleted. It is curious to note that it was heated at that time by means of two open stoves al