steadily becoming more and more strained, until something very like a
crisis had been reached. As usual in English and Anglo-American
communities, it was a quarrel over dollars, or rather over pounds
sterling, a question of taxation, which was producing the alienation. At
bottom, there was the trouble which always pertains to absenteeism; the
proprietaries lived in England, and regarded their vast American estate,
with about 200,000 white inhabitants, only as a source of revenue. That
mercantile community, however, with the thrift of Quakers and the
independent temper of Englishmen, had a shrewd appreciation of, and an
obstinate respect for, its own interests. Hence the discussions, already
of threatening proportions.

The chief point in dispute was, whether or not the waste lands, still
directly owned by the proprietaries, and other lands let by them at
quit-rents, should be taxed in the same manner as like property of other
owners. They refused to submit to such taxation; the Assembly of
Burgesses insisted. In ordinary times the proprietaries prevailed; for
the governor was their nominee and removable at their pleasure; they
gave him general instructions to assent to no law taxing their holdings,
and he naturally obeyed his masters. But since governors got their
salaries only by virtue of a vote of the Assembly, it seems that they
sometimes disregarded instructions, in the sacred cause of their own
interests. After a while, therefore, the proprietaries, made shrewd by
experience, devised the scheme of placing their unfortunate sub-rulers
under bonds. This went far towards settling the matter. Yet in such a
crisis and stress as were now present in the colony, when exceptionally
large sums had to be raised, and great sacrifices and sufferings
endured, and when little less than the actual existence of the province
might be thought to be at stake, it certainly seemed that the rich and
idle proprietaries might stand on the same footing with their poor and
laboring subjects. They lived comfortably in England upon revenues
estimated to amount to the then enormous sum of L20,000 sterling; while
the colonists were struggling under unusual losses, as well as enormous
expenses, growing out of the war and Indian ravages. At such a time
their parsimony, their "incredible meanness," as Franklin called it, was
cruel as well as stupid. At last the Assembly flatly refused to raise
any money unless the proprietaries should be burdened