Authority of the several Acts of Assembly, by Virtue of which the Treasurer is impowered to receive the said Money, the Disposal thereof is wholly in the House of Assembly; And as it is well known that the House of Representatives have from time to time, with great Readiness, Ordered the Payment of such Monies as have been advanced upon occasion of Indian Treaties, when the same has appeared to them to be for the Service of the Province, we cannot without Regret observe an Attempt made to anticipate our Allowance of the Indian Accounts by your Directing the same to be paid out of the Publick Stock, without the Order or Consent of this House. "But as we hope the Expressions used for that Purpose in the Treaty are rather owing to some oversight than any Design, the President and Council had to claim a Right to the Disposal of the Publick Money; We humbly propose that those parts of the Treaty relating to the Payment of any Money by the Treasurer be wholly left out, as things that make no Part of the Treaty. If the President and Council cannot agree in Opinion with this House, We are desirous of a Conference with your Board to-morrow Morning at Nine a Clock, at such Place as you shall please to appoint. "6 m 12, 1737." "Signed by Order of the House, Whereupon the following Message having been prepared, to save time, by the President, the same was read, and being approved, was transcribed, signed by the President, & ordered to be carried down. to the House by the Secretary. "Gentlemen: "No Language in the last Indian Treaty laid before your House could give you so great a Concern as your Misunderstanding of our Intentions proves to us, which we conceive might have easily been prevented if you had sufficiently observed that the Expression in the Recommendation of the Treasurer's Accounts fully submits the whole, as the Law directs, to your House, and as we cannot be supposed insensible of this Direction of the Law in the Disposal of the Publick Money, we assure you it was never in our Thoughts to assume or claim any Power inconsistent with the same; But when Money is to be immediately advanced, since this must be done by somebody, and these Charges being expended solely for the Publick Good, have in that Light been always allowed by the Assemblies out of the Publick money, therefore a Call on the Treasurer to advance it was so natural that to express this was unavoidable; For it cannot be expected the Treasurer should part with any of the Money in his Hands without having something to show for it. Upon the whole we cannot forbear observing to your House that as both you and we can, by our several Engagements, have nothing but the common Interest & the Good of the Publick in View, & it has ever been found by Experience that nothing more effectually contributes to this in Government than a due Harmony between all the Parts of it, it is our earnest Desire that every thing interfering with this may be most carefully avoided; And tho' we cannot see any Inconveniency in an Expression directing the Treasurer, in whose Hands the Money lay, to make the Payments that the Exigency of the Affair at that time required, yet as you desire that in the last Treaty with the Indians laid before you, all those Directions may be left out, for your Satisfaction we have ordered it so accordingly; But request that your House would so far consider the Nature of such Transactions that those who can have no Interest of their own to pursue, but freely give their Attendance for the Benefit of the Publick, may not be laid under such Difficulties as may render the carrying on those Affairs, intended solely for the common Utility, wholly impracticable." The Committee to whom it was referred to examine the Account of the Secretary, exhibited with his Petition, & to make an Estimate of the Services therein mentioned, reported that upon Inspection of the several Papers and Writings, they had made a Calculation of the said services, amounting to upwards of Eighty pounds, exclusive of the Fee of half a Crown by Law given on each Warrant for affixing the Great Seal, & besides the Allowance which ought to be made to him for his extraordinary Trouble this year as Clerk of the Council, but being willing to reduce those Calculations to even the very lowest Rate, that the Assembly might have Room to increase it, they, the said Committee, had agreed on the following Report, in Writing, which was read in these Words: "By Direction of the President & Council, We have viewed & considered the Account exhibited by the Secretary, & as from our own Attendance in the very many Councils of this last year, We are Witnesses of the great Labour & Pains that have been taken in the public Administration, We are sensible that his part in the Writing has been vastly Laborious, not only on the Originals, but the many Exemplifications & Duplicates of these drawn out and certified, to be sent to the Agent in England, several of which take up many Sheets, as we have observed by the Originals remaining in the Office. Particularly we observe that there are above thirty Warrants for the Great Seal to Exemplifications, most of which contain many Sheets, as comprizing a considerable number of Copies put together under the same Certificate. And we are of Opinion, upon the whole, without being able to rate each Particular or Article, that no Person in Philadelphia, at the rate paid to common hired Writers by the Day, would do the same for fifty pounds. As to his Services as Clerk of the Council, the Assembly can be at no Loss to Judge how far the business of this year has Exceeded whatever has been known before, And we cannot but observe that the common Allowance at any Time has been extremely small. "RA. ASSHETON, "Philadelphia, 13th 6 M 1737." "SAM. HASELL, And the Board approving thereof, It is Ordered that the Secretary deliver the same to the House, together with his Account. At a Council held at Philadia., August 26th, 1737, PRESENT: The Honble JAMES LOGAN, Esqr., President. Samuel Preston, Thomas Laurence, Ralph Assheton, Samuel Hasell, The Minutes of the two preceeding Councils being read and approved, The President acquainted the Board that in the evening of the thirteenth instant, when the House adjourned, he received an Order which he now produced, for six hundred pounds, and the same being read, is in these Terms: "Aug 13th, 1737, pay into the hands of James Logan, Esq President, the Sum of Six hundred pounds, towards defraying the extraordinary Charges which arisen in the Administration of the Government this year, by the many & chargeable Messages & Treaties for obtaining Peace, & the Relief of our innocent Inhabitants. "Signed by Order of the House, "A. HAMILTON, Speaker. "To SAMUEL PRESTON, Esq., Provincial Treasurer." Touching which Order the President said he would hereafter speak further. He then laid before the Board a Letter from Governor Belcher, inclosing a Declaration of Rowland Houghton, confirmed by those of John Seton & Benjamin Bagnal, in Answer to the Letter from this Board touching the counterfeit Bills for which William Neal had been apprehended here, and it appearing that Houghton is innocent in the Matter, having received those Bills and paid for them as true & genuine, from one Susannah Buckler, a Person who had been guilty of several gross Impositions on the People of New VOL. IV.-16. England, but is since gone to Britain. The Board conceive the Affair cannot be further traced. Then was read a Letter from Governor Ogle, received this morning by the President, in these Words: "Gentlemen: Although you might very justly entertain the most assured Hopes from my repeated Declaration of a truly sincere Desire on my part to establish Peace between the Inhabitants of these two Provinces, of every effectual Measure in my Power to that End, yet you must be sensible no reasonable Expectation could be had of any Success from my earnest Endeavours and Wishes, unless the Powers of both Governments had co-operated to the same good Purpose, And I wish I had not too much Reason to think the litle Effect of my pacific and amicable Overtures proves more agreeable to your Dispositions than mine. "I must own my Surprize when you talk of my leaving on so unreasonable and impracticable a foot the Treaty of Pacification, for concluding which Mess Preston and Kinsey attended me.' If, indeed, the unreasonableness & Impracticableness are to be judged. according to your Views and Inclinations, perhaps you may be in the Right; But if it was reasonable to insist That Peace and good Neighborhood (which you pretended to desire) should be immediately, and without Loss of time, settled between us, And if it might be supposed practicable, that Those Gentlemen who were sent on purpose, with the fullest Powers and Authorities, should at the Peace and with the Person they were sent to negotiate and conclude what they had in Commission to transact, Then perhaps you may be mistaken in your Opinion of my leaving that Treaty on an unreasonable & unpracticable foot; But, on the contrary, you may appear not to have been in earnest when you gave those two very worthy Gentlemen the Trouble of coming to Annapolis, which Proceeding allows me as little Room as it does you to say anything further on that Subject, especially since I have at least equal good Reason with yourself to expect his Majesty's Directions in these Affairs which have passed during our Administrations. "I have not as yet made y full Enquiry Intend into the Instance you stile of an unparalled Outrage on the Person of Mr. Gatchell, who I am sufficiently authorized, by many Instances of his Behaviour, to reckon a turbulent seditious Disturber of the good Harmony which ought to subsist betwen the two Provinces, And therefore I cannot give the fullest Credit to what he relates of his own Sufferings; But as soon as I can make myself thoroughly apprized of the fact, and all its Circumstances, you may be assured of finding me not less ready than yourself on the like Occasions, in giving all proper Orders for preserving Peace and Tranquility between the two Provinces. I am, "Gentlemen, "Your most Obedient humble servant, "Annapolis, 16th August, 1737. " Addressed, "SAM. OGLE. "To the Honorable James Logan, Esq President, and the Council of the Province of Pensilvania." Which Letter is continued under Consideration. Upon occasion of a late heinous Crime committed by a Negro Man, in willfully setting on fire a dwelling House in the township of Bristol, within the County of Philadelphia, the Necessity of issuing a new Commission for the Tryal of Negroes was represented to the Board, the former Commission, wherein Thomas Laurence & Charles Read, Esq" are assigned Justices for this Effect, being useless by the Death of the last named Gentleman; Whereupon William Allen, Esquire, was named in the room of Mr. Read, & a blank Commission having been prepared by the Secretary, the same was filled up with the Names of Thomas Laurence & William Allen, and signed at the Board. At a Court held at Philadia., September 3d, 1737. PRESENT: The Honble JAMES LOGAN, Esqr., President. Samuel Preston, Samuel Hasell, Thomas Griffitts, } Esqrs. The President acquainted the Board that pursuant to the Commission issued at the preceeding Council, the Justices therein asassigned, with six Freeholders, had proceeded to the Tryal of the Negroe Man, for wilfully setting on fire a Dwelling House, that the Negroe confessed the Fact and received Sentence of Death to be this day executed, but the Prosecutor having been deficient in the Prosecution, & tho' furnished with sufficient Proofs to show the wicked Disposition of the Criminal, his Malice, & threatened Resentments against the Owner of the House, & the Person who then lived in it, together with the Criminal's former bad Character, yet resting the whole upon his own Confession, some of the assistant Freeholders who satt on his Tryal, had from thence been led to make an Application to him, the President, in favour of the said Negroe; and the President hereupon representing that he himself being Owner of the House that was burnt down, is by this Application laid under some Difficulty, lest, on the one hand, a Disregard to |