cticing with their rifles at the weather vane,
a figure of a cock, on the steeple of the old Lutheran church in
Germantown--an unimportant incident, it is true, but one revealing the
conditions and character of the time as much as graver matters do. The
old weather vane with the bullet marks upon it is still preserved. About
thirty of these same riflemen were invited to Philadelphia and were
allowed to wander about and see the sights of the town. The rest
returned to the frontier. As for their list of grievances, not one of
them was granted except, strange and sad to relate, the one which asked
for a scalp bounty. The Governor, after the manner of other colonies,
it must be admitted, issued the long desired scalp proclamation, which
after offering rewards for prisoners and scalps, closed by saying, "and
for the scalp of a female Indian fifty pieces of eight." William Penn's
Indian policy had been admired for its justice and humanity by all the
philosophers and statesmen of the world, and now his grandson, Governor
of the province, in the last days of the family's control, was offering
bounties for women's scalps.

Franklin while in England had succeeded in having the proprietary lands
taxed equally with the lands of the colonists. But the proprietors
attempted to construe this provision so that their best lands were taxed
at the rate paid by the people on their worst. This obvious quibble of
course raised such a storm of opposition that the Quakers, joined by
classes which had never before supported them, and now forming a large
majority, determined to appeal to the Government in England to abolish
the proprietorship and put the colony under the rule of the King. In the
proposal to make Pennsylvania a Crown colony there was no intention
of confiscating the possessions of the proprietors. It was merely the
proprietary political power, their right to appoint the Governor, that
was to be abolished. This right was to be absorbed by the Crown with
payment for its value to the proprietors; but in all other respects
the charter and the rights and liberties of the people were to remain
unimpaired. Just there lay the danger. An act of Parliament would be
required to make the change and, having once started on such a change,
Parliament, or the party in power therein, might decide to make other
changes, and in the end there might remain very little of the original
rights and liberties of the colonists under their charter. It was by