In the next month they met again, and again Hamilton asked for means to defend the country.  The question was put, Should the Assembly give money for the King’s use? and the vote was feebly affirmative.  Should the sum be twenty thousand pounds?  The vote was overwhelming in the negative.  Fifteen thousand, ten thousand, and five thousand, were successively proposed, and the answer was always, No.  The House would give nothing but five hundred pounds for a present to the Indians; after which they adjourned “to the sixth of the month called May."[168] At their next meeting they voted to give the Governor ten thousand pounds; but under conditions which made them for some time independent of his veto, and which, in other respects, were contrary to his instructions from the King, as well as from the proprietaries of the province, to whom he had given bonds to secure his obedience.  He therefore rejected the bill, and they adjourned.  In August they passed a similar vote, with the same result.  At their October meeting they evaded his call for supplies.  In December they voted twenty thousand pounds, hampered with conditions which were sure to be refused, since Morris, the new governor, who had lately succeeded Hamilton, was under the same restrictions as his predecessor.  They told him, however, that in the present case they felt themselves bound by no Act of Parliament, and added:  “We hope the Governor, notwithstanding any penal bond he may have entered into, will on reflection think himself at liberty and find it consistent with his safety and honor to give his assent to this bill.”  Morris, who had taken the highest legal advice on the subject in England, declined to compromise himself, saying:  “Consider, gentlemen, in what light you will appear to His Majesty while, instead of contributing towards your own defence, you are entering into an ill-timed controversy concerning the validity of royal instructions which may be delayed to a more convenient time without the least injury to the rights of the people."[169] They would not yield, and told him “that they had rather the French should conquer them than give up their privileges."[170] “Truly,” remarks Dinwiddie, “I think they have given their senses a long holiday.”

[Footnote 168:  Pennsylvania Archives, II. 235. Colonial Records of Pa., VI. 22-26. Works of Franklin, III. 265.]

[Footnote 169:  Colonial Records of Pa., VI. 215.]

[Footnote 170:  Morris to Penn, 1 Jan. 1755.]

New York was not much behind her sisters in contentious stubbornness.  In answer to the Governor’s appeal, the Assembly replied:  “It appears that the French have built a fort at a place called French Creek, at a considerable distance from the River Ohio, which may, but does not by any evidence or information appear to us to be an invasion of any of His Majesty’s colonies."[171] So blind were they as yet to “manifest destiny!” Afterwards, however, on learning the defeat of Washington, they