I had my share of it; for, as soon as I got back to my seat in the Assembly, I was put on every committee for answering his speeches and messages, and by the committees always desired to make the drafts. Our answers, as well as his messages, were often tart, and sometimes indecently abusive, and, as he knew I wrote for the Assembly, one might have imagined that when we met we could hardly avoid cutting throats; but he was so good-natured a man that no personal difference between him and me was occasioned by the contest, and we often dined together. One afternoon, in the height of this public quarrel, we met in the street. "Franklin," says he, "you must go home with me and spend the evening; I am to have some company that you will like;" and, taking me by the arm, he led me to his house. In gay conversation over our wine after supper, he told us jokingly that he much admired the idea of Sancho Panza,[156] who, when it was proposed to give him a government, requested it might be a government of blacks, as then, if he could not agree with his people, he might sell them. One of his friends, who sat next to me, says, "Franklin, why do you continue to side with these Quakers? Had not you better sell them? The proprietor would give you a good price." "The governor," says I, "has not yet blacked them enough." He, indeed, had labored hard to blacken the Assembly in all his messages, but they wiped off his coloring as fast as he laid it on, and placed it in return thick upon his own face; so that, finding he was likely to be negrofied himself, he, as well as Mr. Hamilton, grew tired of the contest, and quitted the government. These public quarrels were all at bottom owing to the proprietaries, our hereditary governors, who, when any expense was to be incurred for the defense of their province, with incredible meanness instructed their deputies[157] to pass no act for levying the necessary taxes, unless their vast estates were in the same act expressly excused, and they had even taken bonds of these deputies to observe such instructions. The Assemblies for three years held out against this injustice, though constrained to bend at last. At length Captain Denny, who was Governor Morris's successor, ventured to disobey those instructions. How that was brought about I will show hereafter. But I am got forward too fast with my story. There are still some transactions to be mentioned that happened during the administration of Governor Morris. [Footnote 138: It stood on Fourth Street, below Arch.] [Footnote 139: A member of a denomination which has its name from Moravia, a division of Austria-Hungary. For an account of their home and practices, see pp. 168-170.] [Footnote 140: A representative in the lower house of the legislature.]