Books and Manuscripts

John Dickinson's Early Warning Against British Royal Authority

Dickinson, John
A Speech, Delivered in the House of Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania, May 24th, 1764
Philadelphia Printed: London, Re-Printed for J. Whiston and B. White, 1764. First English edition. 8vo. xv, (i), 31 pp. Later stiff blue wrappers, spine browned; all edges trimmed; large illustrated book-plate of James Strohn Copley on inner front wrapper; contemporary ownership signature of John Foster on title-page; small contemporary printed slip mounted at top of p. 1, not affecting text ("It is said the subject of divers appeals from North America is the expediency of annexing their several proprietary governments to the Crown of Great Britain."); scattered light spotting to text; in tan quarter morocco chemise, by Atmore Beach, with same Copley book-plate on inner front panel. Adams, American Controversy 65-5b; Sabin 20049; Howes D-334

An important and early work from Founding Father John Dickinson, his first significant pamphlet in which he presciently warns against the danger of Royal authority and diminished colonial liberties. Full of the seeds of revolutionary sentiment that would make him a leading voice during the imperial conflict of the following decade and earn him the nickname the “Penman of the Revolution”, this first English edition was published shortly after the first edition of William Bradford in Philadelphia in June, 1764.

This pamphlet prints Dickinson's speech given before the Pennsylvania Assembly on May 24th, 1764, where he critically opposed a plan sponsored by Benjamin Franklin and Joseph Galloway that petitioned English King George III to replace Pennsylvania's proprietary system with a royal government. Franklin and Galloway's plan grew out of years' long internal state conflicts, such as sectional disputes between Western and Eastern Pennsylvania colonists over matters like frontier defense and taxation. Dickinson, then in his early 30s, joined the Assembly in 1762, and had come to be known for his oratory skills and deep opposition to the proprietary government run by William Penn's sons. Despite his critical stance toward the proprietors, he wisely foresaw the danger to Pennsylvania colonists' unique and fundamental rights in providing the Crown with more direct authority over them. 

Dickinson argues that Pennsylvanians had too much to lose in giving over to Royal control. "To him the colony seemed uniquely privileged, enjoying liberties which ‘unhappy circumstance’ had denied to other parts of the world, even to Great Britain itself. The inhabitants of Pennsylvania, he pointed out, enjoyed that ‘best and greatest of all rights,’ complete religious freedom; had no oaths or tests to restrict their political rights; and could select the best qualified men for office, whatever the ‘conscientious persuasion’ of those men might be…The Assembly was not limited by any powerful council ‘instituted in fancied imitation of the House of Lords.’ It also had control over its own sessions and could not be dismissed by any governor; it was elected every year and thus was held directly accountable to the voters…All of these various rights, Dickinson reminded his fellow representatives, were based upon the Charter of Privileges of 1701…and he predicted that few of them would remain under the rule of royal ministers dedicated to reorganizing the Empire and accustomed to a different set of institutions." (Jacobson, John Dickinson's Fight Against Royal Government, 1764, 1962, p. 73)

Two days following his speech, the Assembly voted in favor of the petition for Royal control, and Dickinson's efforts to have his opposition put into the official record was voted down. Despite this, over the spring and summer of 1764, public opposition to the petition grew, and in the state elections that fall, Dickinson led a partially successful opposition that cost Franklin and Galloway their seats in the Assembly. Nonetheless, larger imperial aims over the American colonies, such as the Stamp Act in 1765 and Townshend Acts of 1767-68, galvanized American opposition to British rule which, over time, put an end to any desire for Royal government in Pennsylvania. For Dickinson though, "1764 marked the beginning of his important political leadership…and in this fight he had clearly sided with the people and against any plans he thought subversive of their rights. Indeed, his arguments in 1764 showed not essential conservatism, as historians have so frequently charged, but a belief in the more radical idea that fundamental rights could not be altered without the consent of the governed, an idea that clearly foreshadowed the American position in the Revolutionary crisis of succeeding years." (Jacobson, p. 85)