The Plain Dealer, Numb. II - 11
It is true, the King and Parliament have granted large Sums to the Colonies towards reimbursing them the Expences they have been at,---and have we not partook of their Bounty in Proportion to our Merits? and have been obliged to disgorge between nineteen and twenty Thousand Pounds, that we might have pocketed, had we complied with the King’s Orders? This surely cannot be laid to the Proprietaries Charge; and let me ask if it would have been otherwise, if we had been under His Majesty’s immediate Government.
HAD it been to our Author’s Purpose, we should have been told that at the Commencement of the late War, this Proprietaries gave Five Thousand Pounds to the Province towards its Defense: That the War before the last, they gave twelve Cannon, Eighteen Pounders, for the Battery erected for the Defense of the CITY; that they have given largely to several public Institutions, such as the Hospital, Academy, Library, &c. &c. &c.
ALL these Things were necessary to be forgot, that with the Greater Appearance of Truth, the Odium of the late Disturbances might be thrown on the Proprietaries, and the World be made to believe that the People were forced to an Insurrection by Proprietary Extortion. Such slender Artifices cannot deceive the least Discerning; and I think he has paid a very ill Compliment to the Understandings of the good People of the Province, to attempt to gull them with such Cobwebb Sophistry.
IT is granted on all Hands that we are in a wretched Situation; and I should be glad to be informed from what Cause the Weakness of the Government proceeds.-----I wonder the Gentleman did not tell us; or was he ashamed to confess that it did not proceed from the Proprietaries; that they were not to blame, having, by their Governors, repeatedly pressed for a Law by which the natural Force of
