John Dickinson's Fight Against Royal Government, 1764

I F the change of government now meditated, can take place, with all our privileges preserved, let it instantly take place: but if they must be consumed in the blaze of royal authority, we shall pay too great a price...." 1 This declaration was the heart of John Dickinson's argument before the Pennsylvania Assembly on May 24, 1764. At issue was a plan, sponsored by such notables as Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Galloway, and John Hughes, to ask George III to replace the colony's proprietary system with a royal government. To his audience Dickinson's words came as an unpleasant surprise. Previously, he had vigorously disagreed with the proprietors. Now he was making his first public statement on the question of royal government. An odd mixture of conservative maxims and radical political doctrines, his speech was long and carefully prepared. When Dickinson finished, Joseph Galloway summarily and haughtily dismissed his ideas. On the following day the Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of the plan for royal government. Only in succeeding weeks and months did Pennsylvania's anti-proprietary leaders begin to realize the magnitude of the political whirlwind stirred up by their own program and the counterattacks upon it. Only in later years did some of them come to understand the meaning of Dickinson's warnings about the "blaze of royal authority" and the dangers it would bring to the colonies. John Dickinson's statements of 1764 demonstrated an awareness of the implications of recent British actions, an awareness that was in striking contrast to the shortsightedness of most Pennsylvania politicians. Yet for historians his words