OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 167 
from Great Britain assisted the colonies and were sup- 
ported by the imperial exchequer. The colonies con- 
tributed men and money to the cause, as it was right 
they should; and here the need of a continental taxing 
power soon made itself disastrously felt. The drift of 
circumstances had brought the thirteen colonies into 
the presence of what we may call a continental state 
of things, but nowhere was there any single hand that 
could take a continental grasp of the situation. There 
were thirteen separate governors to ask for money and 
thirteen distinct legislatures to grant it. Under these 
circumstances the least troublesome fact was that the 
colonies remote from the seat of danger for the moment 
did not contribute their fair share. Usually the case 
was worse than this. It often happened that the legisla- 
ture of a colony immediately threatened with invasion 
would refuse to make its grant unless it could wring 
some concession from the governor in return. Thus, 
in Pennsylvania, there was the burning question as to 
taxing the proprietary lands, and more than once, while 
firebrand and tomahawk were busy on the frontier, did 
the legislature sit quietly at Philadelphia, seeking to use 
the public distress as a tool with which to force the 
governor into submission. It is an old story how it 
proved impossible to get horses for the expedition 
against Fort Duquesne until Benjamin Franklin sent 
around to the farmers and pledged his personal credit 
for them. Sometimes the case was even worse, as in 
1674, when Pontiac’s confederates were wreaking such 
havoc in the Alleghanies, and Connecticut did not feel 
sufficient interest in the woes of Pennsylvania to send 
them assistance. Such lamentable want of codperation 
and promptness often gave advantages to the enemy 
