"I can only say," he told them, "that I will readily pass a bill for
striking any sum in paper money the present exigency may require,
provided funds are established for sinking the same in five years."
Messages long and acrimonious were exchanged between the parties. The
Assembly, had they chosen, could easily have raised money enough by
methods not involving the point in dispute; but they thought they saw in
the crisis a means of forcing the Governor to yield. The Quakers had an
alternative motive: if the Governor gave way, it was a political
victory; if he stood fast, their non-resistance principles would
triumph, and in this triumph their ascendency as a sect would be
confirmed. The debate grew every day more bitter and unmannerly. The
Governor could not yield; the Assembly would not. There was a complete
deadlock. The Assembly requested the Governor "not to make himself the
hateful instrument of reducing a free people to the abject state of
vassalage."[344] As the raising of money and the control of its
expenditure was in their hands; as he could not prorogue or dissolve
them, and as they could adjourn on their own motion to such time as
pleased them; as they paid his support, and could withhold it if he
offended them,--which they did in the present case,--it seemed no easy
task for him to reduce them to vassalage. "What must we do," pursued the
Assembly, "to please this kind governor, who takes so much pains to
render us obnoxious to our sovereign and odious to our fellow-subjects?
If we only tell him that the difficulties he meets with are not owing to
the causes he names,--which indeed have no existence,--but to his own
want of skill and abilities for his station, he takes it extremely
amiss, and say 'we forget all decency to those in authority.
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