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[GALLOWAY, Joseph]. An Address to the Freeholders

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Philadelphia: Anthony Armbruster, 1764. 12 pp., 8vo (190 x 118 mm). Disbound. Housed in a cloth chemise and morocco backed slipcase. Condition: minor toning. first edition. among the principal pamphlet attacks on proprietary government. From its founding, Pennsylvania operated as a proprietary government under the control of a member of the Penn family. During the 1750s and early 1760s, conflict between the Assembly, which represented the people, and Thomas Penn began increasing, caused largely by Penn's refusal to pay taxes on his large Pennsylvania estates, his refusal to allow an increase in circulation of paper currency and his refusal to assist the colonists in their defenses against the Indians on the western frontier and in the mob violence of the Paxton Boys. In 1764, led by Benjamin Franklin, a movement began to petition King George to relieve Penn of his powers and begin Royal control of the colony. In April 1764, Benjamin Franklin published "a long antiproprietary polemic, Cool Thoughts on ... Public Affairs, which supplemented a shorter, more intemperate, piece by Galloway, An Address to the Freeholders and Inhabitants of ... Pennsylvania. Both pamphlets were 'distributed gratis by the thousands' and were 'thrown into the Houses of the several Inhabitants' of Philadelphia" (James H. Hutson, "Campaign for a Royal Province" in PMHB, vol. 94, pp. 438-39). This pamphlet, which reviews the arguments of the antiproprietary movement, is (regardless of its original circulation) scarce, with only a handful of institutional copies and none appearing at auction in recent years. Evans 9561; Sabin 59853.

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