Page:The Rise of American Civilization (Volume 1).djvu/85

 until the close of his career. His family's discontent with life on the raw frontier of America, and his interests in England forced him to return to his native land, leaving the administration of his colony in other hands. For some strange reason he chose governors who had little sympathy with his settlers; one, a soldier who ruled with military severity; others, riotous livers who offended his sober and God-fearing subjects.

As if to fill his cup to the brim, the colonists charged Penn with enriching himself from the sale of lands and playing the part of an exacting landlord. Grieved by these strictures, Penn replied that in truth his outlays had been greater than his receipts and that his obstreperous settlers did not pay their quitrents. In fact the dispute became so bitter that Penn was driven by sheer weariness to consider selling out to the Crown—only to be greeted by a declaration from the Pennsylvania legislature to the effect that the very proposition savored "first of fleecing and then of selling." Full of sorrows, Penn died in 1718 at the age of seventy-four.

In the natural course, the proprietorship passed to his three sons, all of whom loved pleasure and good living more than the hard work of efficient administration. So the conflict with the colony went on—quarrels over paper money issued by the legislature in spite of proprietary orders, over attempts of the assembly to tax the property owned by the Penns, over efforts to collect quitrents from recalcitrant settlers, over attempts of the belligerent Scotch-Irish on the frontier to wring from the pacific Quakers assistance in their constant troubles with the Indians.

It was only by trading and huckstering that the Penns managed to hold to their property at all and at best they were playing a losing game. Year by year the party of hand disaffection grew steadily. Having gained the upper in the assembly in 1764, it sent Benjamin Franklin to England to ask for the abolition of the proprietary system and the substitution of royal authority. To such a pass had