ines, but it was vetoed.[109:3] Such astute observers as Franklin
feared in 1753 that Pennsylvania would be unable to preserve its
language and that even its government would become precarious.[109:4] "I
remember," he declares, "when they modestly declined intermeddling in
our elections, but now they come in droves and carry all before them,
except in one or two counties;" and he lamented that the English could
not remove their prejudices by addressing them in German.[109:5] Dr.
Douglas[109:6] apprehended that Pennsylvania would "degenerate into a
foreign colony" and endanger the quiet of the adjacent provinces. Edmund
Burke, regretting that the Germans adhered to their own schools,
literature, and language, and that they possessed great tracts without
admixture of English, feared that they would not blend and become one
people with the British colonists, and that the colony was threatened
with the danger of being wholly foreign. He also noted that "these
foreigners by their industry, frugality, and a hard way of living, in
which they greatly exceed our people, have in a manner thrust them out
in several places."[110:1] This is a phenomenon with which a succession
of later frontiers has familiarized us. In point of fact the
"Pennsylvania Dutch" remained through our history a very stubborn area
to assimilate, with corresponding effect upon Pennsylvania politics.

It should be noted also that this coming of non-English stock to the
frontier raised in all the colonies affected, questions of
naturalization and land tenure by aliens.[110:2]

V. The creation of this frontier society--of which so large a portion
differed from that of the coast in language and religion as well as in
economic life, social structure, and ideals--produced an antagonism
between interior and coast, which worked itself out in interesting
fashion. In general this took these forms: contests between the
property-holding class of the coast and the debtor class of the
interior, where specie was lacking, and where paper money and a
readjustment of the basis of taxation were demanded; contests over
defective or unjust local government in the administration of taxes,
fees, lands, and the courts; contests over apportionment in the
legislature, whereby the coast was able to dominate, even when its white
population was in the minority; contests to secure the complete
separation of church and state; and, later, contests over slavery,
internal improvements, and