Philadelphia’s First Policy System: the Municipal Corporation Tries Going It Alone

The 1701 creation of Philadelphia’s First Policy System with the series of legislation referred to as the Charter of Privileges, we can begin our discussion of the City of Philadelphia. The Charter included the designation of the Municipal Corporation of Philadelphia as the “official” government of the city, independent of the County of Philadelphia and even the Provincial Legislature.

The Municipal Corporation, however, as an urban government, was badly designed and out of step with the rise of American colonial democracy. Autonomous is one word, a closed oligarchic policy system is more revealing, it was largely abandoned, at least neglected by its creator William Penn from the start. To be fair, Penn never intended, if the Free Society of Traders is suggestive, to exercise close proprietary control over the urban element of his colony. In his view, the commanding heights of his colonial economic base ought to be a partnership with the dominant players in his economic base–in his mind his First Purchasers.

They had to buy in, and that meant a very significant role in the governance and policy of the city in which he lodged the function of economic decision-making . The Municipal Corporation certainly detached the urban policy from the other political institutions, and put it securely in the hands of a social, Quaker, economic and political elite.

That he had to share its membership with his chief opponent, David Lloyd, was not to his liking, but through the initial appointment process, Penn was able to secure reasonable control over its decision-making bodies and chief political officers. The Corporation’s was tasked with promoting economic growth, and coping with the needs and demands that resulted from Philadelphia’s growth.

Whether Penn had given sufficient thought to what was needed to carry out those tasks and functions, i.e. the powers and resources that were to be available to the Corporation, is not evident. if ever an urban government was created so under-powered relative to its goals, Philadelphia would be at the top of the list. It was soon clear, the appointed leadership of the Corporation did its best to imitate the responsibilities and functions of the guild-led English municipality–without a guild system–it was committing itself to detailed micro business regulation as well as macro-functional economic development strategies.

It was to do both without the participation of its residents, or its franchised citizens. The Corporation’s relevant constituency was its appointed, life-long membership, which alone elected delegates to its city council, which in its turn, elected a board of aldermen, who then elected the chief political offices of the Corporation.” Who Governs” in Philadelphia’s first policy system are indisputably elites (relative to Pennsylvania’s turn of the 18th century context) and Penn-appointed elites at that.

To be eligible for appointment, Corporation members had to own property. That is what separated them from, non elites, or the masses (resident non-propertied), called “the Mob” in this time period. Masses, as defined as non-property-owners cannot participate in the Corporation’s membership or policy-making. Most of the commercial elite was propertied, but not members of the Corporation. These non-members could vote for the county and the provincial legislature if they chose. As we shall see they were mobilized by David Lloyd and converted into allies of his developing political party, the Quaker Party. The non-propertied masses had they own ways, mostly anomic, in making their demands obvious.

No city government should be an island within its own boundaries, but the Philadelphia of 1701 Municipal Corporation was.

Who Governs? Philadelphia’s second mayor, Edward Shippen, was Penn’s close political ally. But Penn’s dominance over the city governance bodies was probably lost once his ship cleared the Philadelphia horizon. That David Lloyd was able in a short few years to secure his dominance over the body was more attributable to Penn, his insensitivity to his policy decisions, and his management style than to the Charter. By his actions and proprietary initiatives and leadership, he alienated many of the membership, but more importantly, as we shall discover, unified the non-Corporation member commercial community in opposition to him. In most ways, Penn himself was almost irrelevant to the subsequent evolution of Philadelphia city government.

We have also duly warned the reader the Corporation was inserted into a larger, pre-existing policy system. It fit into and functioned rather poorly into the provincial political-policy-making fabric. Isolated, the Municipal Corporation, very much on its own, tossed into a complicated and turbulent political civil war between Proprietary Executive Branch and Legislature. The Corporation struggled to find a mission congruent with its powers, resources, and medieval class identity, It lacked from the start the willing cooperation of its resident commercial class, and its resident population.

Over the next half-century the main arena of Pennsylvania politics–and the political civil war–was the Provincial Legislature. The urban agenda was weakly developed or understood–this was not uncommon–and larger issues and political fissures consumed the attention of its citizenry and elites. Because it used the English-guild dominated Municipal Corporation as its prime model, the Philadelphia Corporation looked inward and inserted itself where it was least wanted, the budding, and very diverse Philadelphia commercial community. Isolated it will prove to be a weak and very isolated player in the political civil war.

Its weaknesses created vacuums into which the Legislature inserted its own parallel set of institutions into Philadelphia’s local policy system. That further enfeebled the Corporation–and began to establish a legacy that will play a major role in the structural configuration of future Philadelphia policy systems to this very day. The issue of “who governs” Philadelphia was in reality contested to a degree by Philadelphia County, but more importantly by the Provincial Legislature (David Lloyd and his emerging Quaker Party), the Proprietary’s various actors, including Penn’s appointed Deputy Governor and his Secretariat (James Logan), and the residents and commercial elite which had its own ideas as well. From 1701 straight thru 1712–essentially its first decade–the Municipal Corporation had a very rough go in its policy quests and initiatives.

So as we discuss Philadelphia’s path of policy-making, we are seeing the urban side of a two-pronged class movement that will evolve over the colonial period. By the end of the colonial period, the question will amazingly be, less “who governs”, but rather “does anyone govern”.

1. Municipal Corporation Assumes Powers/Responsibilities of the English Guild and Widens the Gap Between It and the Non-Member Philadelphia Commercial Elite

By the time of its birth, much of Philadelphia’s merchant elite had drifted into the constituency of the anti-Penn Quaker Party, which itself was well-represented in the membership of the Corporation itself. Viewed today by historians, the Municipal Corporation had quickly passed into the hands of David Lloyd-who was ofttimes Speaker of the Assembly in this period. The County of Philadelphia, more precisely its Penn-appointed Court system was still in the hands of the Proprietary. The Deputy Governor, a Penn ally, was inexperienced, erratic, young, and decidedly controversial which only hurt Penn’s standing in popular and elite opinion. Penn in the later years of the decade was in bad health, and lodged in debtor’s prison–through he still maintained serious contacts in Parliament.

Twenty years of weak, almost non-existent local government since the founding of the colony had built up a catalog of issues and complaints among its citizens and businesses. The imposition of the Corporation by Penn as Philadelphia’s new-found government had resulted in both hope and a measure of anti-Free Society resentment. Off to the sidelines of Pennsylvania’s politics in the provincial Legislature, the agenda of the Philadelphia Municipal Corporation struggled, despite Lloyd, with securing any serious legislative support for the rapidly growing city of Philadelphia. Its failure only amplified the general feeling against the Corporation, and increased frustration within the Corporation.

As we shall see the Corporation had to deal with a great number of urban issues and needs: police and fire protection, economic and transportation infrastructure, a variety of land use and building construction issues, and others. From the start it was obvious the Corporation did not institutionally possess resources needed for any one of them. Enhanced powers, particularly the power to tax, and in some cases authorization to use tax dollars for specific functions and services, had to be secured from the Assembly–which failed to respond.

The Corporation could never expect to have gathered sufficient support for anything in the legislature–or county– until it had formed some basis of understanding with the Philadelphia resident, citizen, and especially its commercial elite. The general Philadelphia electorate was able to vote for county and provincial delegates, and the support of those superior bodies was essential to the other salient policy areas. The poor image of the Corporation created a reluctance to empower the Corporation which when combined with an almost obsessive unwillingness to tax itself created a illogical syndrome in which Philadelphians demanded services and then refused to pay for them-which to at least one major Philadelphia historian (Gary Nash) was a hallmark of the dissident, complaining, anti-authoritarian Quaker culture.

Part of the reason why the Corporation, even with Lloyd’s dominance of it, was unable to bridge the gap was it couldn’t find a constituency to pay for new services, but instead pursued as a primary strategy guild-like business and market regulation initiatives that only intensified the gap between it and the general community. The Corporation leadership was relatively united in attempting a replica of English guild-town government without the intermediating structure of the guild. Without the “sanitizing” neutrality of the guild institutions, the Corporation was viewed as responsive to a narrow set of self-serving merchants, ridden with conflicts of interests, yet entrusted with the function of business self-policing.

The initial membership of the Corporation was far too narrow to attempt that function. Yet it did. What followed was a nearly twenty year tension (1701 to the late 1719) between it and the business community, a tension which undermined the Corporation’s other functions, its need for resources and the political support to obtain them, and new service delivery initiatives that accumulated with sustained growth of the City/population. These costs associated with Philadelphia’s growth did not garner any support from the agricultural, lower density hinterlands which dominated both county and provincial assemblies. Malapportionment raised its ugly head early in the history of Philadelphia.

Unable to establish a winning track record, and faced with opposition on nearly every front, the
Corporation by the early 1720’s was frustrated, cynical, beleaguered and for the most part without legitimacy of consensual mission within the Philadelphia policy system. By the beginning of the 1720’s, the Corporation was ripe for either major reform (which was not, or ever, forthcoming) or for some sort of internal implosion. The twenties, then, would prove to be the pivotal decade in the evolution of the Corporation. From that point on, the Corporation was less and less Philadelphia’s chief urban government, than an elite Quaker “country club” entrusted with several urban responsibilities. In effect, it privatized itself–with the help, of course, of the Provincial Legislature. The frustration and subsequent internal shift, in my view, resulted from the events and initiatives described below which occurred between 1710 and 1720.

Part II of this module deals with the 1712 Provincial Legislation that set the course for the Philadelphia Corporation as the chief city institution responsible for municipal governance. In this period the after effects of war, the intense struggle between Logan and his Proprietor allies, and Lloyd anti-Proprietor opposition pitted the County (Logan), Corporation (Lloyd) and Assembly (mostly Lloyd until after 1710). The fiscal and service delivery issues were no where on the policy agenda of either element, and control over the Court System superceded any urban concerns and needs. The hinterland bias of the Provincial level politics and policy-making simply moved Philadelphia and the Corporation to the backwaters of the Province–an amazing feat given the economic growth of the city and the success of its commercial base and power of its commercial elite.

I

William Penn was in trouble the day the Philadelphia Municipal Corporation opened its doors for business. Literally Penn left town for England, heading into bad times that persisted for over a decade, leaving the Philadelphia Corporation’s city council to the vicissitudes of the General Assembly, the Philadelphia commercial elite, and the effects of urban growth.

The Corporation faced a mountain of distracting problems and concerns which demanded immediate attention. Although the city council and board of alderman met irregularly in relatively short sessions (which kept poor records), its agenda was impressive and it with good intentions it set a mission for its elected mayor/recorder and provided a government for the City. The cause of much of the crowded and controversial agenda was economic growth caused by past population growth that fueled future population growth.

Pennsylvania had evolved into vortex of English (and Northern European) immigration. How much of that was attributed to (1) Penn’s Holy Experiment that promised and delivered religious toleration and ethnic diversity or (2) the incremental development of a multi-port “European immigration cluster/complex” based on the demand for Pennsylvania immigration is anyone’s guess. But, over the first half-century of its founding, Philadelphia port elites and its business community benefited/suffered from a roller coaster growth/war/ recession cycle that overall netted more opportunities than pitfalls. Simply put, Philadelphia’s timing was perfect; it was a growth machine mostly caused by its external environment-competitive hierarchies.

In one sense this growth was bad news for the Municipal Corporation. If the reader remembers, economic growth was the central dynamic that created the English Municipal Corporation, underlay its mission d’etre, and received its highest policy priority. The city council and board of aldermen by Penn elected their mayor and recorder annually, and embarked on functions and activities they had known so well in England. Where possible they copied the guild-based agenda that placed great emphasis on economic development, physical development, and most importantly market-business regulation of Philadelphia’s trades, businesses, occupations, markets practices and infrastructure, and consumer protections.

This was not without precedent in the colonies. New York and Philadelphia in particular had entrusted their municipal governance to an English guild-style municipal corporation–and they both went down the same road. Teaford presents strong evidence after 1700 “In the years following late-seventeenth century incorporation America’s aldermen and [city] councilors fulfilled the expectations of their royal and proprietary benefactors, devoting the bulk of their legislative effort to promoting economic order and growth …. through 1705 and 1724 of the thirty-four [Philadelphia Corporation] ordinances drafted during this period, again more than half concerned commerce“. Public works  another 18%., and Public Safety and Order another 12% .[99] Jon C. Teaford, the Municipal Revolution in America: Origins of Modern Urban Government, 1650-1824 (University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp.18-9, See Table 1.

Given the blurring of political and economic decision-making so characteristic of the colonial era, the Corporation members and their leadership were far less politicians than active and competing businessmen. By no means were they neutral parties as the guild leadership and city council. Corporation members were active participants in commercial endeavors, competing with other businesses for opportunities and profits. Teaford reports that the Philadelphia Corporation members from 1701 to 1726 some 67% were merchants, 26% tradesmen, and a measly 7% lawyers. “.. the 16 artisans who served as members of the Philadelphia corporation from 1701 to 1726 represented fifteen different crafts… Many of those classed as merchants also engaged in manufacturing as a lucrative sideline” [99] Jon C. Teaford, the Municipal Revolution in America, pp. 22-6 .

Assuming responsibilities formerly performed by the English guild over local markets, trades and business, the Philadelphia Municipal Corporation entered into a minefield, a minefield created by Penn and his Free Society of Traders. While the Society still lingered on in its last spasms, the real problem was its heritage of Penn favoritism, mediocrity-scandal, and the polarizing reality that Corporation membership secured preferential treatment and inside access to its decision-making. This meant it was at war with much of Philadelphia’s non-member commercial elite.

The significantly larger Philadelphia/Pennsylvania commercial business community had been rather pointedly exiled from the Corporation (Penn already viewed it as a major element of the coalition in opposition to his Proprietary), and it was in no way sympathetic with the plight of the Corporation. When the Corporation pursued traditional guild-like policies it applied them to the general Philadelphia commercial-business market and participating firms. There is little doubt the Corporation’s business regulation message, “we are from the government and we are here to help“:, went over very well with a huge group of businesses who did not wish them well.

As we know, the institution of the guild, the engine that powered the English municipal corporation, did not make it to Philadelphia. The Mayor and the motley crew in the council and board of alderman was what replaced it. For the most part the 1700 guild system was still effective in England and Moreover the municipal guild policy system separated the guild market/occupations/ decision-making from a separately elected city council that reviewed, approved and implemented many guild council decisions/initiatives.

The absence of the guild in Philadelphia removed a neutral-advocacy-professional aggregator of multiple trades, occupations, and economic sectors and entrusted both responsibilities of guild regulation with community policy implementation and replaced it with a politically chosen select group of self-interested competitors who were acting in the community interest. To help the reader understand how central the English guild was to urban governance and market regulation the next optional section will provide a quick summary.

the English experience

Each individual English municipal guild was a bottoms-up institution based on the myriad of individual trade guilds for each sector, occupation, trade (etc.). Each of the individual guilds sent its representative to an overall municipal wide “guild council”, which elected its own leadership and made is decisions on inter-guild issues primarily. The guild council was the workhorse–but each trade handled its own internal affairs so long as they did not affect other guilds. The guild council served as the aggregator of multi-guild needs, demands, and initiatives. Trade and sector regulation, however, was performed by each individual trade guild (self-regulation), not the Guild Council.

It was the municipal guild council that either appointed (initially) designated members to the municipal city council, or over time fielded candidates in a freeholder democratic election. Urban freeholders were chiefly business owners and artisans–as the electoral franchise required some level of property ownership or social/aristocratic status. Nothing like todays remarkable open franchise existed in 17th century urban government.

Still, the electoral franchise for the English city council represented elements not included within the guild complex. In effect the guild-dominated city Municipal Corporation which ran city government, was sanitized from the more private activities of the Guild Council. The overlap between the two, however, was tempered by a real atmosphere of civic concern (“consciousness”, they called it) within the individual members of the business community–a believe-it-or-not characteristic of early proto-mercantile capitalism.

It was the city council that usually dealt with upper levels of authority, and the institution that performed–implemented– urban services and managed the urban infrastructure. That the city council overlapped greatly with the guild and its wishes, the two parallel set of institutions were not one and the same. Each insulated the other, and a specialization of functions promoted a level of accountability.

Teaford states guild-dominated British local government assumed a level of responsibility for protecting the poor from the rich, the small business from the large, and the city-resident producer from the foreign business competitor. [99] Jon C. Teaford, p.7. For example, when a tavern sold an item, a pint of beer for example, the price was usually set by the city; bread also was a set-price. The responsibly to provide fuel for energy/cooking, a necessity in 17th century households, was assumed by the city council.

Cities usually assumed responsibility for both business-relevant infrastructure of business, and urban quality of life infrastructure: safety, public health-sanitation, streets, fire, and water. Port facilities, wharves, piers, dredging, and storage (including barrel-making) were usually installed by the business and exempted from taxes, and supplemented with city services where necessary or appropriate. Cities in those days didn’t tax; they got most of their revenues from fees and duties (excise taxes) for services/products, and their investments in infrastructure.

The Philadelphia Corporation Experience

With each attempt to replicate the English guild municipal governance, the Corporation opened up active resistance, or poor cooperation and much ill-feeling within the overall business community. Hence, the gap between the Corporation, its members and leadership, and the general Philadelphia resident and business would grow day by day, year by year. Accordingly, as the Corporation set key prices for goods and services (bread, wine, wood, flour, and beer were pervasive), standardized and inspected measurements, scales, and zoning-like regulations, set up annual public fairs, a market place with stalls, plus, addressing consumer and intra-inter business concerns and complaints, they stirred up and mobilized the non member business community.

In the beginning the Corporation embraced several services common to those provided in English cities and colonial America: the constable (public order), and night watch, public water supply, regulated slaughterhouses, chimney and fire standards/inspections, a burying ground, a jail, and they secured a fire engine. The court system was set up, and would meet four times a year. To accomplish these tasks and services the Corporation would either require citizen labor or hire its own personnel/company [99] Judith M. Diamondstone, “the Government of Eighteenth Century Philadelphia“, in Bruce C. Daniels (Ed.), Town & County: Essays on the Structure of Local Government in the American Colonies (Wesleyan University Press, 1978), pp. 244-6. Whatever its structural and resource deficiencies, the Municipal Corporation of Philadelphia “set up shop” in 1701, and by the standards of the day operated a more or less conventional city governance.

They simultaneously erected barriers to entry to protect Corporation member city craftsmen and merchants from what they viewed as unfair competition from non member businesses. One can imagine the stir that created. They awarded stalls at the market place, and in Philadelphia’s trade it primarily supported its resident businesses at the expense of Pennsylvania hinterland-county seat businesses. In that Philadelphia port-export-finance complex rested on hinterland trade, there was plenty of opportunity for self-serving decision-making, as well problems arising from conflicting multiple goals.

Moving into transportation, the Municipal Corporations regulated the free movement of goods into the City and within the city as they had done in England. Various traffic management, road and drainage standards, as well as wharf/pier, bridges and ferries standards. In effect they sought to increase their city’s entrepreneurial innovation by reducing “barriers to entry” of goods and services to city merchants–while by restricting access into the city from non-Philadelphia merchants. Some product regulations even forbade sale of goods made in the West Indies.

Teaford reports on an episode that happened in neighboring borough Lancaster which having been harmed by a Philadelphia decision, also passed similar legislation to strike back at Philadelphia. Teaford generously concluded that municipal corporations in the new world “adhered to the Old World belief that unregulated vocational opportunity would ultimately end in commercial impoverishment. thus they looked to the municipal corporation to limit the number of sellers, transporters, and manufacturers, and thereby guarantee each a profit” [99] Jon C. Teaford, the Municipal Revolution in America, pp. 20-1. What he did not mention is the ill-feeling that inevitably resulted. Nor did he mention that those offended could elect delegates to the county and provincial legislatures–or if they really wanted to get rough refer the matter to the annual Quaker meeting.

A third extension into guild functions were performed by the Corporation’s judicial courts. These courts necessarily dealt with debtors, crime and robberies (all of which had commercial implications), but also involved themselves in contract disputes, and the normal span of business and consumer conflicts. This became a minefield of personal disputes and business rivalries–and poor, often politicized law.

the Confrontation--The battle, between and within the merchant-commercial community, waged though 1717 when it finally erupted into a full-scale crisis. The Corporation was compelled to hold an unheard of six weekly meetings devoted solely to the granting of new freeholder status to nonmember merchants. If you were going to be regulated by the city council, than let me vote for it was the issue. At the end of these sessions, the Corporation admitted an additional 424 merchants and artisans to the privileged status as Corporation freeholder.

With an expanded elite the Corporation, however, reverted back to its guild-business regulation and once again clamped down, in 1718, by approving yet a new exclusionary ordinance forbidding non-member merchants from selling or making their wares in Philadelphia–taking in particular sight any nonmember butcher that was subject to imprisonment. Those who were left out of the 1717 expansion of Corporation membership were, surprisingly, the one’s most affected. No doubt a new cycle of antagonism began.

Though the Corporation’s membership was considerably larger than Penn’s 1701 appointments, it still left out a goodly number of Philadelphia’s commercial elite. This was made worse over the following decades, by a general tendency in the population and commercial classes not to involve oneself in politics by taking the personal step to register (and be qualified as a free holder) for voting. The Corporation devised its own procedures to circumvent free holder qualification for new and existing members, and that tended to reinforce its county-club image within the Corporation.

Its membership was more an “aristocracy”, a social status standing, than a representative of the commercial elite. By the 1760’s when the drift to Independence and Revolution seriously commenced, the Corporation would have evolved into an institution which did not mirror the behavior and attitudes of an urban government, then or now.

II. 1712: To Tax and Deliver Services or Not to Tax and Not Deliver Services: That is the Question

Tied to its economic development functions was the obligation to maintain key infrastructure (ports, wharves, piers, ferries, marketplaces and modes of access public buildings). As any owner of property quickly learns, things break, wear out, become obsolete, or need to expand. The Philadelphia Corporation was now responsible for coordinating, and managing the urban infrastructure of the port of Philadelphia.

Previous to 1701, no unit of Pennsylvania government was tasked with this urban infrastructure, and accordingly, it had mostly been installed by private commercial elites with access to private funds. In some cases, streets, private residents will be drafted to provide labor, or assume responsibility for sweeping/cleaning streets adjacent to their property. When the Corporation assumed guild responsibilities in market and business regulation, it relied on the largely unreimbursed labor of its mayor and recorder. Infrastructure, far more expensive, with a longer time horizon was out of the question for the Corporation.

For the first few years, the Corporation did its best to function in urban service delivery, but growth made it inevitable that new resources, inspectors, street sweepers (etc.) had to be hired–and paid for. The Corporation’s fiscal capacity was marginal indeed, and it had no residual power to tax. A new market house was paid for by its members private contributions, as were later repairs to piers and wharves. Private contributions were usually loans which were to be repaid by income derived from the facility. Loan payments were annual and so financial capacity of the Corporation was an issue that could not be put off.

To help the situation the in 1704 Corporation set up a small claims court from which it could charge fees. To those who were obliged to pay, these fees were both an insult, and illegal. City residents successfully petitioned the proprietary governor to shut “that pernicious devouring and Extravagant Court” down. The Corporation was left on its own, to figure out a way to pay its bills, while adjusting to growing needs and burdens. In 1706 the Corporation sent legislation to the General Assembly asking for power to tax. Both Penn and the Legislature failed to approve it. Further appeals were made in 1709 and 1711, and in both instances the Legislature was unwilling to empower the Corporation.

We can see that over its first decade the Philadelphia Corporation was truly isolated politically, and equally important no major political-policy body was willing to assume responsibility for its pressing urban burdens. The Corporation’s request for delegated power to raise revenues/tax to pay for its assigned legal functions was a not unreasonable request. Yet we can see its citizenry and provincial level institutions, legislative or proprietary did think its request unreasonable. One might observe we are really seeing the effects of an anti-authoritarian Quaker political culture which demanded few services–and literally no taxes.

A second explanation, a much more important one, was that Penn’s Proprietary and the Legislature was during the decade engaged in a horrendous and stasis-inducing struggle that paralyzed decision-making by reducing it to a partisan battlefield, without much concern for the larger effects of war. It is much too early in our history to introduce “populism” into our discussion. but between 1701 and 1710 the fight between Lloyd, his embryonic Quaker Party, and the Legislature/Corporation under his sway and Penn and his chief protagonist/ally James Logan exhibited a reasonably pronounced personalistic, anti authority multi-class attack on the Proprietary–and the British colonial administration.

To support this assertion, in 1704, Lloyd was elected (by the Board of Aldermen) to the second highest official position in the Corporation: the Recorder. At the time he was also president of the city’s courts, a member of the Philadelphia County Court (a legislative as well as judicial body), and Speaker of the Assembly. In that year, Lloyd authored three major pieces of legislation intended to put a Lloydian-populist spin on the 1701 Charter of Privileges. The second of these was a bill “for Confirmation of the Charter of the City of Philadelphia”.

The thrust of that legislation was to reduce the control of the County over the City and the Corporation. The County Courts (which again are both legislative and judicial in function) would have lost all jurisdiction over the City, yet the City would elect two delegates to the County. The legislation also proposed transferring several proprietary functions to the Corporation (including the power to raise money for municipal improvements) which would have reduced the power of the Proprietary over city affairs rather substantially. Penn, of course, vetoed this legislation, but the episode clearly indicates how the Corporation became involved inter internecine war between Lloyd and the Proprietary [99] Gary B. Nash, Quaker and Politics, pp. 261-5.

Lloyd, likely drawing from his personal attributes and character, as well as ideological-political beliefs brought the Pennsylvania policy system to stasis, extreme polarization, and pretty closed to being a failed government. In this turbulent context, the plight of the Philadelphia Corporation simply could not gain traction in the legislature. On top of this, after 1708, it appeared realistic that Penn would either lose his colony, sell it to the Crown–or die.

Emerging from debtor’s prison Penn suffered additional strokes which left him on the margins of consciousness and life. He would suffer yet another major stroke in 1711 which effectively reduced him to incompetent status. He died in 1718, but from then on his wife Hannah, a conflict-ridden family, and James Logan in America was about all he could count on. Lloyd thought the Proprietary was likely to be replaced with a royal governor, and indeed it was. During this period, England was at war, and that compounded the Board of Trade and Privy Council administration, and Lloyd’s opposition to it generated adverse attention from London. If possible Pennsylvania had displaced Massachusetts as the problem child of colonial America.

Things got so bad, that both elite and mass backed away from Lloyd’s quasi-populist, radical agenda. The closer Pennsylvania got to having a royal governor, the less its citizens liked it; Penn was not as despotic as a governor was likely to be, and he still held onto a core of elites that could tolerate him, and a Quaker community who respected his propriety. Logan, a leader with many cross-ambitions, remained on the whole faithful to Penn and his family and he enjoyed some respect among the Quakers and in the commercial community.

In 1710, a young conservative Quaker and commercial leader, Isaac Norris published a pamphlet calling for a cession of useless paralyzing politics, and urging elites, Quakers and citizens to back off its mindless opposition. Pennsylvania needed an effective government–and that, he dared to say, included taxes. The pamphlet was endorsed at the Quaker Annual Meeting and, combined with a conciliatory letter from Penn deeply influenced the results to the 1710 legislative election. Not only was Lloyd tossed out, but every single one of his supporters were also. Elected were a considerable majority willing to continue with the Proprietary, and conduct responsible government under a reasonable speaker. Lloyd was not returned to office until 1714, and in this brief period, the Proprietary was able to achieve its will in the legislature.

The 1711 legislature was not inclined to trust the weak, closed, and thus far unpopular and fairly ineffectual Philadelphia Municipal Corporation. Its previous closeness to Lloyd and the Quaker Party had begun to shift as early as 1708 when several alderman elected by the City Council to the Board of Alderman were high status commercial merchants not active in political circles. This subtle shift in the upper body continued after 1710 political shift to the Proprietary [99] Gary Nash, Quakers and Politics, p311.

As the decade rolled on, the background between the Proprietary Provincial Council (the former upper house now more a Proprietary cabinet after the Charter of Privileges) blurred, and many traditional Quaker merchant/commercial businessmen served on both. After the 1710 election, therefore, the political atmosphere had mellowed considerably, and for the next several years the political civil war which had waged since 1683 faded into the mists (it would resume). In this short interlude a number of important legislative acts were approved on the Judiciary, the structure of county and town government, and on various civil and policy area issues (militia).

So in 1711-12, the Assembly finally acted on yet another request from the Corporation for taxing power. Passing the 1712 Act was necessarily driven by the obvious need for taxes to finance the Corporation’s functions and inherent expenditures; the Corporation for a decade had no power to tax, and all sorts of complaints arose from its inability to provide services, even when it was inclined to do so. Fires, police, public health, housing-related and criminal matters, and a host of other issues (including an almshouse which shall be discussed in a future community development module) required immediate attention.

But as the Act demonstrates, the General Assembly, however desperate the need, was not willing to empower the Corporation, its city council or board of aldermen with the power to tax.

With records inadequate to explain why, the legislature instead required a popular election of eligible Philadelphia voters (adult male free holders satisfying resident and property requirements) –hence external to the Corporation membership and Corporation itself–to elect six assessors to conduct and oversee the taxing power within the City. These assessors owed their loyalty and legitimacy to voters who may or may not have been members of the Corporation. The Corporation itself had little to no control over the election and the subsequent determinations made by the six collectively.

To me it seems evident the Corporation appeared too fragile, certainly its closed membership and decision-making did not fit into the rising tide of democracy and elections, made painfully evident by the use of elections to the Legislature. Moreover, if there were one policy area that was super-sensitive to the lack of democracy, it was the power to levy taxes. Finally, the past decade of painful semi-populist attack by Lloyd and the Quaker Party was too recent to forget and its return possible in the next election to take the chance that such a vital structural change would be repealed, returning Philadelphia to an unsatisfactory lack of power. Hence, the Legislature employed a structural solution, albeit clumsy in hindsight, to close the gap between the eligible franchise of the City, and the closed corporation entrusted with its governance.

The 1712 legislation called for the election, by the free holders of Philadelphia of six tax assessors who would set rates/administer/collect/ and transfer the tax proceeds to the Municipal Corporation for agreed upon services performed by the Corporation. The assessors would meet with the Corporation’s City Council, determine what funds and expenditures were required that year, and the assessors would then set the tax rate sufficient to raise the funds. This arrangement, as modified by later legislation handled the City of Philadelphia’s general fiscal and budgetary matters until the Revolution.

The 1712 legislation was arguably the most important determinant of the future course of the Corporation. Instead of empowering the Corporation with the right to tax, to budget, and to be held accountable for its fiscal decisions and effectiveness in service delivery, the provincial legislature constructed an intermediate elected group of assessors beyond the control of the Corporation and its membership. As Diamondstone asserts, the legislature’s unwillingness to empower the Corporation changed forever the role and power position of the Municipal Corporation as Philadelphia’s legitimate municipal government:

The Act of 1712 was significant for the future of town government of Philadelphia. The political and administrative failure to make the municipal corporation an effective form of government led … to the creation of ‘statutory authorities’ [the assessors]. These were independent and usually uncoordinated administrative agencies that each had responsibility for some limited aspect of the actual government of the town [in this instance, budget and taxes]. This development was ultimately fatal to the closed corporation [99] Judith M. Diamondstone, “the Government of Eighteenth Century Philadelphia“, in Bruce C. Daniels (Ed.), Town & County: Essays on the Structure of Local Government in the American Colonies (Wesleyan University Press, 1978), pp. 247.

The 1712 Act began the deinstitutionalization and de-functioning of the Philadelphia Corporation. If properly empowered, as most of its Atlantic port municipal corporations were, the Philadelphia Corporation could have developed into the government of the City of Philadelphia, but as Judith Diamondstone, continued the legislature’s unwillingness to support the Corporation as the undisputed legitimate government of the city by …

Making positive use of its status as symbol and spokesman for the community’s common interest, the Corporation might have become the coordinating agency and merged into a competent and responsive government. But through incapacity, and perhaps a lack of energy, the Corporation gradually lost all touch with the responsibilities it could not handle. These passed to the statutory authorities which had only the smallest administrative link to the Corporation, an which often displayed political antagonism. These authorities having limited responsibility to deal with … often managed very satisfactory. The Corporation, with less and less to do, became more and more segregated from the interests of the growing citizenry of Philadelphia [99] Judith Diamondstone, “the Government of Eighteenth Century Philadelphia“, in Bruce C. Daniels, Town & County: Essays on the Structure of Local Government in the American Colonies (Wesleyan University Press, 1978), pp. 247-8

What is even more important is that from 1712 onward, every expansion of meaningful city services, from Philadelphia’s famed Night Watch, Fire Company and equipment, Library to schools and other key services, similar legislation set up an elected official to preside over and manage, on behalf of the City (and Legislature), raise and tax as needed to pay for its activities and employees, and handle the overall administration of the service. In all instances, from the 1712 tax assessors to later additions, a small organization, complete with bureaucracy, political constituency, vendors and identity developed. Essentially these were today’s “special districts”, but headed, not by an official appointed by or serving within the Corporation, but by an independent official elected by a free holders external to the membership of the Corporation.

Assessment: The first decade after the Charter of Privileges during which Penn’s time of troubles and distraction was protracted, destabilizing and fundamental, was also consumed by Queen Anne’s War. This perfect storm in which Lloyd conducted his populist jihad against the Proprietary, also witnessed major internal divisive Quaker controversies which carried over into political and policy discussion.

This was a horrible ebb and flow Game of Thrones period that defies description but its waging precluded serious and thoughtful policy-making by any in the provincial level. The Corporation, sincerely attempting to govern in the best standards and agenda of the day as modeled from the English guild-driven municipal government was not able to consistently function, and respond effectively to rising urban needs and Philadelphia’s rapid population and economic growth. Standing out among its structural deficiencies was it lack of the power to tax, a power necessary to raise funds for expenditures and service delivery. In what proved to be a short interlude, the Proprietary and forces allied to it were able to assume dominance of the provincial legislature and an advantage within the bodies of the Municipal Corporation.

Penn’s Proprietary party wound up in the lead during the 1711-12 period–the time when the 1712 Act actually set the precedent for establishing a bimodal Philadelphia policy system.

So, in my view, the 1712 Tax Act was not directly aimed at the Philadelphia Corporation. It was an honest effort to provide to it the critical power to tax and raise funds for its services and functions. As early as 1696, the Legislature had proposed essentially the same act to apply to county government–almost five years previous to the incorporation of the Philadelphia Corporation. It was not successful at that time, but in the same year as the Municipal Corporation Tax Act of 1712 Act,  the  General Assembly also approved that same act to apply to the counties, including Philadelphia County. Still, the Legislature did have a its own interest in the Legislation.

The goal was less sub-provincial political dominance than to seize the right (from the Proprietary) to create one specific form of tax over which it could initiative the tax, set the rate, and take advantage of funds raised by to ensure the tax funded desired purposes relevant to the General Assembly, not the Proprietor. As such it was a major step in the Legislature’s multi-decade strategy to assert legislative power autonomous of the Propriety/Executive Branch. In this sense, the 1711 Act was the first step in the Legislature itself initiating and drawing benefit from the power to tax–without Proprietary involvement in the legislature’s processes.

What we are really witnessing in 1711-12 is a series of compromise enactments which reset the Charter of Privileges, and adjusted it to an every more empowered General Assembly, and a correspondingly weakened Proprietorship. Whatever the long term effects would be at the sub-provincial level was, if thought about at all, were of the least concern to either party [99] See, Joseph E. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: a History (Charles Scribner Sons, 1976), pp. 99-104.