Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/161

Rh in the hands and power of the Governor and his friends. But finally in 1739, the Assembly yielded to the importunities for money, and voted £3000, to Isaac Norris, his brother in law Thomas Griffitts, Thomas Leech, John Stamper and Edward Bradley, "for the use of King George II." There were now beginning the dissensions arising out of the claims of the Proprietaries that all their lands should be exempt from provincial taxation, which grew into a grave occasion of opposition to their government in time, and the tie of religion being sundered, this opposition to the Proprietaries on account of their exceeding selfishness eventually placed Pennsylvania in the front of the contests of the Revolution. Norris was a member also of the Assemblies of 1740 and 1741, and in 1742, in the latter year occurring the riotous scene at the election, due it was said to the machinations of the Governor, in which however Norris was returned to the Assembly. In 1745 he was with Kinsey and Lawrence appointed by the Governor a commissioner to represent Pennsylvania at the conference with the Indians at Albany. And in 1755 he was again sent to Albany as a like commissioner to treat with the Indians.

Continuing a member of the Assembly, he succeeded John Kinsey as Speaker in September 1751, and in that year he directed the legend for the new State House Bell which became so prophetic, though perhaps at the time he would have shrunk from the application made of it in 1776. He continued Speaker of the House fifteen years. The contest between the people and the Proprietaries grew during this period, and Norris at the head of the Quakers was firmly opposed to their privileges as they claimed them. In 1757, the Assembly resolved to send him and Franklin to England to solicit the removal of grievances arising out of the Proprietary instructions to their Governors, such as forbidding them to sanction any bill for the revenue which did not exempt their property from taxation and the like; but on account of ill health he declined the appointment, so that Franklin undertook it alone. His opposition to their encroachments, however, did not lead him to desire the exchange of a Royal Government for a Proprietary, and when