EXTRACT

FROM THE

ANNUAL MESSAGE OF THE GOVERNOR,

TRANSMITTED TO THE

SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

READ JANUARY 8TH, 1851.

My attention has been called to the large body of original papers in the State Department, connected with the colonial and revolutionary history of the State, and their extremely exposed and perishing condition. These records are worth prescrvation, as containing authentic information of the action of our fathers in the struggle for national existence. In the Capital of Pennsylvania, and with the sympathies of her patriotic people, was independence matured and declared. Her soldiers were most numerous around the standard of the nation, and there were more battle fields on her soil than in the same area elsewhere. Every memorial of those days of devotion and trial should be faithfully preserved. There exists a single copy in manuscript of the minutes of the Revolutionary Executive Council, a document by far too valuable to remain longer within the reach of accident or mutilation. It would be gratifying to a large body of our constituents if the Assembly would authorize the employment of a competent gentleman to select and arrange for publication these memorials of an interesting epoch in the history of the Commonwealth.

REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE

SENATE.

Mr. H. A. Muhlenberg, from the Select Committee to which was referred so much of the annual message of the Governor as recommends the publication of the minutes of the Proprietary Government of Pennsylvania, and the original records and papers in the Secretary's office, relating to the Colonial and Revolutionary history of this Commonwealth, made a report which was read as follows, viz.:

That they have examined the subject referred to them with that attention which its importance requires, and concur entirely with the

recommendation of the Executive; in support of which and as an explanation of the provisions of the bill accompanying this report, they beg leave to lay the following facts and arguments before the Senate:

The importance of the subject to which the attention of your committee has been directed, can scarcely be exaggerated. In it is involved the decision of the question, whether the history of Pennsylvania shall be preserved and made public, or whether it shall remain liable to all the accidents and risks incident to the preservation of manuscripts, which may at any moment be destroyed, and which the hand of time is slowly, but surely effacing. Should that prove to be the case, the early authentic history of this great State will be irrevocably gone, and our descendants, at some future day, will bitterly execrate the parsimony of their ancestors, who, to spare a trifling expense, which could easily have been borne, have condemned them to remain in ignorance of the authentic history of their native State.

In the official records of a State only, can be found its true history. Historians may have been careless and inexact, they may have been influenced by prejudice, or some preconceived theory, or they may have wilfully perverted the truth of history, and from any of these causes may have arisen opinions most opposite to truth, but which, from constant repetition, have become so indelibly impressed upon the public mind that nothing can remove them. But from all these objections the official records of a country are free. They are, as it were, the daily records of the government, written down at a time when there is no temptation to make false entries, the desire to do which invariably springs from subsequent transactions. They are free from prejudice and the influence of false theories, and from the very necessity of the case, they must be as nearly in accordance with the truth as it is possible for fallible human nature to make them. Hence arises the great value which has at all times been placed upon records such as those now under consideration.

The States of this Union are peculiarly fortunate in this respect, that their history commenced at a period at which the doctrines of public liberty and the rights of the governed had already made such progress, that some form of a representative government was necessary, and that the wishes of the people should, in some degree at least, be consulted. A representative government necessarily implied a record of the transactions of that government; and hence while the early history of most other nations is lost, either from great antiquity, or from the fact that where the will of one man is law, there is no necessity for any record or precedent, the history of the various States of the American Union is preserved in the most authentic of all shapes, the minutes of the acts and transactions of their government made at the time to which they refer. As, therefore, the wisdom and love of liberty of our ancestors have preserved for us the early history of our country, does not a sense of duty to

those who shall succeed us, dictate that the least we can do is to preserve what has been so carefully handed down? And does not the -provision in the Constitution under which we live, directing the weekly publication of the acts of the present government, add an additional argument to the view here presented, by showing the importance which has ever been attached by the wisest and best to the publication and preservation of the true history of the Commonwealth?

Your committee think that a brief reference to what has been done upon this subject by the governments of other countries and States, will bear them out in the view which they have taken of the importance of the action they recommend. The government of England is at this time engaged in the publication of her original records, commencing with her oldest original paper-the Doomsday-book of William the Conqueror-and many valuable and important discoveries have already been made. The magnitude of this work, covering eight hundred years, filling several hundred printed folio volumes, and estimated to cost over a million sterling, shows the importance of which it is deemed by the enlightened statesmen who projected and continue the publication. The Academy of France, under the direction and at the expense of government, are engaged in a similar undertaking, which will doubtless be as extensive and costly as the work already referred to. The government of the United States, with commendable liberality, has appropriated large sums to the publication of the Journals of Congress during the Revolution, the American State papers, the early diplomatic correspondence of the government, and are now engaged in the publication of the American. Annals, a work comprising original papers referring to the revolutionary history of the country, which will prove of immense value to future historians, and will be a proud monument of the great liberality and enlightened views of the National Governmeut. But the United States go no further back than the formation of the confederation; colonial history is the peculiar property of the respective States. Here, however, we are again met with bright examples, which should induce us to emulate the wise, liberal, and patriotic example of our sister States. The States of New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and other members of the Union have commenced the publication of their Colonial and Revolutionary history. The State of Maryland, when engaged in this work, discovered that many portions of her history, originally entire and intact, had been destroyed by time, accident, or carelessness, an irreparable loss, which should teach us to learn wisdom by experience. of the misfortunes of others. Our neighboring State of New York, which seems destined to surpass us in all great enterprizes, has made most liberal provision for the preservation, collection, and publication of her early history, sending agents, at great expense, to England and Holland, to examine and extract from the records of those countries, all papers throwing light upon the early history of that

State, copies of which have been made for her use. Other States have taken similar steps, and the expense of one such mission would probably exceed the entire appropriation asked for in the accompany-. ing bill.

Nor are we without similar examples in the prior history of this Commonwealth. In 1752, the legislature of that year directed the publication of the Journals of the House, from 1684 to that time, which owing to the poverty of the colony, and the scarcity of printing materials, had that far remained in manuscript. It was a bold and expensive undertaking for a poor and thinly-populated colony, but it was accomplished, and to the wisdom and liberality of our ancestors, we owe the preservation of these journals, embraced in seven large folio volumes, and now in the State Library. The Colonial Records would doubtless have been published ere this, for the public men of those days had wise and enlightened views, but up to the Revolution they were looked upon in a great measure as State secrets, and their publication would not have been permitted. But the proceedings of the Council of Censors were published by the Legislature at a later period, and surely if, when this State was comparatively poor, it could afford to spend, what were to them large sums, in the preservation and publication of the Acts and Records of Government, it can now afford to expend an infinitely smaller sum, in proportion to resources and population, in carrying on a work of such importance.

In the opinion of the committee, Pennsylvania has lagged behind her sister States in the preservation and publication of the materials for the true history of the United States sufficiently long, and it is now time that she should perform her fair share. In addition to this, the fact should be remembered, that Pennsylvania is one of the oldest States in the Union-that her local history is not the least interesting, and that a proper sense of State pride, as Pennsyl vanians, should induce us to make public the struggles and trials of her early settlers, as well as the sacrifices and patriotism of her sons during the Revolutionary contest, the notorious neglect of which, in most of the published histories, should cause the check of every true-hearted Pennsylvanian to blush, the more especially as this neglect has been in a great measure caused by the omission of her Legislature to make public and accessible to historians the record cvidence of those services.

In conclusion, the Committee desire to say a few words in explanation of the plan which they have adopted in the accompanying bill, for the publication of the records and papers referred to in the Governor's message, and to explain as briefly as possible the value of the said records and papers (to ascertain which a long and laborious search has been necessary, and has been performed,) in doing which, they beg leave to state here, that they think they have adopted the most economical plan possible, so much so, that the annual ap