re resolved to do all in our power to
redress them, rather than entail upon ourselves and our posterity the
calamities of a cruel Indian war." The Indian records were searched, and
several days spent in unsuccessful efforts to prove fraud in a late
land-purchase.

Post after post still brought news of slaughter. The upper part of
Cumberland County was laid waste. Edward Biddle wrote from Reading: "The
drum is beating and bells ringing, and all the people under arms. This
night we expect an attack. The people exclaim against the Quakers." "We
seem to be given up into the hands of a merciless enemy," wrote John
Elder from Paxton. And he declares that more than forty persons have
been killed in that neighborhood, besides numbers carried off. Meanwhile
the Governor and Assembly went on fencing with words and exchanging
legal subtleties; while, with every cry of distress that rose from the
west, each hoped that the other would yield.

On the eighth of November the Assembly laid before Morris for his
concurrence a bill for emitting bills of credit to the amount of sixty
thousand pounds, to be sunk in four years by a tax including the
proprietary estates.[349] "I shall not," he replied, "enter into a
dispute whether the proprietaries ought to be taxed or not. It is
sufficient for me that they have given me no power in that case; and I
cannot think it consistent either with my duty or safety to exceed the
powers of my commission, much less to do what that commission expressly
prohibits."[350] He stretched his authority, however, so far as to
propose a sort of compromise by which the question should be referred to
the King; but they refused it; and the quarrel and the murders went on
as before. "We have taken," said the Assembly, "every step in our power
consistent with the just rights of the freemen of Pennsylvania, for the
relief of the poor distressed inhabitants; and we have reason to believe
that they themselves would not wish us to go farther. Those who would
give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve
neither liberty nor safety."[351] Then the borderers deserved neither;
for, rather than be butchered, they would have let the proprietary lands
lie untaxed for another year. "You have in all," said the Governor,
"proposed to me five money bills, three of them rejected because
contrary to royal instructions; the other two on account of the unjust
method proposed for taxing the proprietary estate.