r 1764, on the eve of the Revolution.
British statesmen were planning a system of more rigorous control of the
colonies; and the advisability of a stamp tax was under consideration.
Information of all these possible changes had reached the colonies.
Dickinson foresaw the end and warned the people. Franklin and the Quaker
party thought there was no danger and that the mother country could be
implicitly trusted.

Dickinson warned the people that the British Ministry were starting
special regulations for new colonies and "designing the strictest
reformations in the old." It would be a great relief, he admitted, to
be rid of the pettiness of the proprietors, and it might be accomplished
some time in the future; but not now. The proprietary system might
be bad, but a royal government might be worse and might wreck all the
liberties of the province, religious freedom, the Assembly's control
of its own adjournments, and its power of raising and disposing of the
public money. The ministry of the day in England were well known not
to be favorably inclined towards Pennsylvania because of the frequently
reported willfulness of the Assembly, on which the recent disturbances
had also been blamed. If the King, Ministry, and Parliament started
upon a change, they might decide to reconstitute the Assembly entirely,
abolish its ancient privileges, and disfranchise both Quakers and
Presbyterians.

The arguments of Franklin and Galloway consisted principally of
assertions of the good intentions of the mother country and the
absurdity of any fear on the part of the colonists for their privileges.
But the King in whom they had so much confidence was George III, and the
Parliament which they thought would do no harm was the same one which
a few months afterwards passed the Stamp Act which brought on the
Revolution. Franklin and Galloway also asserted that the colonies like
Massachusetts, the Jerseys, and the Carolinas, which had been changed to
royal governments, had profited by the change. But that was hardly the
prevailing opinion in those colonies themselves. Royal governors
could be as petty and annoying as the Penns and far more tyrannical.
Pennsylvania had always defeated any attempts at despotism on the part
of the Penn family and had built up a splendid body of liberal laws and
legislative privileges. But governors with the authority and power of
the British Crown behind them could not be so easily resisted as the
deputy governors