294 PENNSYLVANIA, THE QUAKER COLONY CHAP. 



younger sons Thomas and Richard, were wealthy absentees 

 living in London, little in touch with the Quakers, and 

 were represented in the province by the (lieutenant) 

 governor and his council. 



Trouble began again when, in the year 1739, war broke 

 out between England and Spain, followed later by war 

 with France and her Indian allies, which continued on and 

 off until 1763. The British government called upon the 

 colonies to contribute money and other supplies for the 

 service of the war, to raise contingents of troops and to 

 build forts. The votes for these objects must, under the 

 charter of Pennsylvania, be passed as a voluntary act of 

 the legislature. They were presented from time to time 

 by the governor and council to the Assembly ; and they 

 were supported by the Church and Presbyterian parties 

 in the colony. But the Quakers held an unbroken 

 majority in the Assembly, and they followed the prin- 

 ciples of peace. 



We may pause here to consider the attitude of the early 

 Friends towards war. Accepting the teaching of Christ as 

 a gospel of pure love, they held that war was unchristian, and 

 this alike in its origin and in its results. George Fox had been 

 called out of " that nature whence wars arise," and " lived in 

 the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion 

 of all wars." Barclay too applied the peaceable ethic of 

 Christ without flinching to the whole of life. Friends did not 

 indeed deny that force was needed in the community, as in 

 the family, to restrain ill-doers, to protect the weak, and to 

 preserve that ordered peace, upon which freedom itself and 

 the power to work out man's nature depends. For the 

 community includes many persons who have not come, as 

 Barclay would say, to the pure dispensation of the gospel, 

 but are still " in the mixture," and for these the restraint of 

 force is needed in the spirit of love. As their consciences 

 become enlightened to understand the teaching <jf Christ 

 more fully, such restraint will be needed less and less, even 

 to vanishing point. The use of force in maintaining civil 

 order is however marked off from the sphere of war by this 

 distinction, that the former is regulated by justice and law, 

 and the latter by uncertain motives, often greed or offended 

 dignity. That war too might be governed by justice was a 

 desire that sometimes found expression on the part of the 



