Digital Paxton: Digital Collection, Critical Edition, and Teaching Platform

The Conduct of the Paxton Men Impartially Represented - 14

Lord B----------ST spoke to this Effect----‘The chief End of a Parliamentary Enquiry is not to discover or to punish the Persons concerned in any Tumult; it is the Conduct of the Magistrate that we are principally to enquire into; and if upon such Enquiry, it should appear, that the Tumult was occasioned by any unjust or Oppressive Conduct, or by Negligence and Indolence, we ought to censure or to punish such a Magistrate----Such an enquiry, and such an Issue on Enquiry, will satisfy the People, it will remove the Causes of Tumults, and consequently will prevent them for the future: Whereas if we employ ourselves soley in discovering and punishing the Rioters, we do not remove but encrease the Cause of Tumults;---we shall make the People more discontented than they are---The Severity of the Punishment may sear up the Wound for a Time, but it will not be healed; it will fester, and endanger the total Dissolution of the Political Body.’

‘By these Kind of Proceedings (says another noble Lord) we may for a While keep the People quiet, or knock out the Brains of those who shall presume to be otherwise; but we shall never remove their Discontents, or gain their Affections; and this must be done, or our Government must be made Arbitrary; for a free Government cannot be supported but by having the Affections of the Generality of the People.’

Now, Sire, had your Quakers, those Children of Peace, adopted these wise Sentiments, and pursued these humane just and truly politic Measures, every Thing might have been easy. But instead of this, they neglected and despised the Complaints of an injured and oppressed People; refused to redress their Grievances; they promoted a military Apparatus; fortify’d the Barracks; planted Cannon, and strutted about in all the Parade of War, as if they chose rather to have the Province involv’d in a Civil War, and see the Blood of perhaps 5 or 600 of his Majesty’s Subjects shed, than give up, or banish to their native Caves and Woods, a Parcel of treacherous, faithless, rascally Indians, some of which can be proved to be Murderers. But if they were all innocent, by what Law are we obliged to maintain 140 idle Vagabonds? Must Pennsylvania work for murdering Savages as their Lords and Masters?

Contents of this annotation: