homas Penn offering to subscribe 5000 pounds, as a free gift to
the colony's war measures. The Assembly accepted this, and passed the
bill without taxing the proprietary estates. It turned out, however,
to be a shrewd business move on the part of Thomas Penn; for the 5000
pounds was to be collected out of the quitrents that were in arrears,
and the payment of it was in consequence long delayed. The thrifty
Thomas had thus saddled his bad debts on the province and gained a
reputation for generosity at the same time.

Pennsylvania, though governed by Quakers assisted by noncombatant
Germans, had a better protected frontier than Maryland or Virginia; no
colony, indeed, was at that time better protected. The Quaker Assembly
did more than take care of the frontier during the war; it preserved
at the same time constitutional rights in defense of which twenty-five
years afterwards the whole continent fought the Revolution. The Quaker
Assembly even passed two militia bills, one of which became law, and
sent rather more than the province's full share of troops to protect
the frontiers of New York and New England and to carry the invasion into
Canada.

General Braddock warmly praised the assistance which Pennsylvania gave
him because, he said, she had done more for him than any of the other
colonies. Virginia and Maryland promised everything and performed
nothing, while Pennsylvania promised nothing and performed everything.
Commodore Spy thanked the Assembly for the large number of sailors sent
his fleet at the expense of the province. General Shirley, in charge
of the New England and New York campaigns, thanked the Assembly for
the numerous recruits; and it was the common opinion at the time that
Pennsylvania had sent more troops to the war than any other colony. In
the first four years of the war the province spent for military purposes
210,567 pounds sterling, which was a very considerable sum at that time
for a community of less than 200,000 people. Quakers, though they hate
war, will accept it when there is no escape. The old story of the Quaker
who tossed a pirate overboard, saying, "Friend, thee has no business
here," gives their point of view better than pages of explanation.
Quaker opinion has not always been entirely uniform. In Revolutionary
times in Philadelphia there was a division of the Quakers known as the
Fighting Quakers, and their meeting house is still pointed out at the
corner of Fourth Street and Arch. The