dlock. The Assembly requested the Governor "not to make himself the
hateful instrument of reducing a free people to the abject state of
vassalage."[344] As the raising of money and the control of its
expenditure was in their hands; as he could not prorogue or dissolve
them, and as they could adjourn on their own motion to such time as
pleased them; as they paid his support, and could withhold it if he
offended them,--which they did in the present case,--it seemed no easy
task for him to reduce them to vassalage. "What must we do," pursued the
Assembly, "to please this kind governor, who takes so much pains to
render us obnoxious to our sovereign and odious to our fellow-subjects?
If we only tell him that the difficulties he meets with are not owing to
the causes he names,--which indeed have no existence,--but to his own
want of skill and abilities for his station, he takes it extremely
amiss, and say 'we forget all decency to those in authority.' We are apt
to think there is likewise some decency due to the Assembly as a part of
the government; and though we have not, like the Governor, had a courtly
education, but are plain men, and must be very imperfect in our
politeness, yet we think we have no chance of improving by his
example."[345] Again, in another Message, the Assembly, with a thrust at
Morris himself, tell him that colonial governors have often been
"transient persons, of broken fortunes, greedy of money, destitute of
all concern for those they govern, often their enemies, and endeavoring
not only to oppress, but to defame them."[346] In such unseemly fashion
was the battle waged. Morris, who was himself a provincial, showed more
temper and dignity; though there was not too much on either side. "The
Assembly," he wrote to Shirley, "seem determined to take advantage of
the country's distress to get the whole power of government into their
own hands." And the Assembly proclaimed on their part that the Governor
was taking advantage of the country's distress to reduce the province to
"Egyptian bondage."

[Footnote 342: _Morris to Shirley, 16 Aug. 1755_.]

[Footnote 343: _Morris to Sir Thomas Robinson, 28 Aug. 1755._]

[Footnote 344: _Colonial Records of Pa_., VI. 584.]

[Footnote 345: _Message of the Assembly to the Governor, 29 Sept. 1755_
(written by Franklin), in _Colonial Records of Pa._, VI. 631, 632.]

[Footnote 346: _Writings of Franklin_, III. 447. The Assembly at first
suppressed this paper, but afte