Post after post still brought news of slaughter.  The upper part of Cumberland County was laid waste.  Edward Biddle wrote from Reading:  “The drum is beating and bells ringing, and all the people under arms.  This night we expect an attack.  The people exclaim against the Quakers.”  “We seem to be given up into the hands of a merciless enemy,” wrote John Elder from Paxton.  And he declares that more than forty persons have been killed in that neighborhood, besides numbers carried off.  Meanwhile the Governor and Assembly went on fencing with words and exchanging legal subtleties; while, with every cry of distress that rose from the west, each hoped that the other would yield.

On the eighth of November the Assembly laid before Morris for his concurrence a bill for emitting bills of credit to the amount of sixty thousand pounds, to be sunk in four years by a tax including the proprietary estates.[349] “I shall not,” he replied, “enter into a dispute whether the proprietaries ought to be taxed or not.  It is sufficient for me that they have given me no power in that case; and I cannot think it consistent either with my duty or safety to exceed the powers of my commission, much less to do what that commission expressly prohibits."[350] He stretched his authority, however, so far as to propose a sort of compromise by which the question should be referred to the King; but they refused it; and the quarrel and the murders went on as before.  “We have taken,” said the Assembly, “every step in our power consistent with the just rights of the freemen of Pennsylvania, for the relief of the poor distressed inhabitants; and we have reason to believe that they themselves would not wish us to go farther.  Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."[351] Then the borderers deserved neither; for, rather than be butchered, they would have let the proprietary lands lie untaxed for another year.  “You have in all,” said the Governor, “proposed to me five money bills, three of them rejected because contrary to royal instructions; the other two on account of the unjust method proposed for taxing the proprietary estate.  If you are disposed to relieve your country, you have many other ways of granting money to which I shall have no objection.  I shall put one proof more both of your sincerity and mine in our professions of regard for the public, by offering to agree to any bill in the present exigency which it is consistent with my duty to pass; lest, before our present disputes can be brought to an issue, we should neither have a privilege to dispute about, nor a country to dispute in."[352] They stood fast; and with an obstinacy for which the Quakers were chiefly answerable, insisted that they would give nothing, except by a bill taxing real estate, and including that of the proprietaries.

[Footnote 349:  Colonial Records of Pa., VI. 682.]

[Footnote 350:  Message of the Governor to the Assembly, 8 Nov. 1755, in Colonial Records of Pa., VI. 684.]