\n\nSo Quakers consider themselves prohibited from doing evil (like going to war) but not compelled to prevent others from doing evil (as pacifists, how would they?) and the legislative result, in colonial Pennsylvania, was a long tradition of pragmatically backing nonbelievers\u2019 violent initiatives ON THE CONDITION that they were worded so they could have been nonviolent if they wanted and their failure to so be was no knock on the Quakers.
\nLike during the Revolution, Benjamin Franklin got them to make appropriations for \u201cfire engines\u201d, and \u201ccorn\u201d (which at the time just meant \u201cfine discrete grains\u201d, cf. \u201cpeppercorn\u201d) and used it to buy cannons and gunpowder, which everyone understood would be the result
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maybe crossed a wire on the \u201ccorn\u201d thing, here\u2019s the man in his Autobiography
\n\n\n\nMy being many years in the Assembly, the majority of which were \nconstantly Quakers, gave me frequent opportunities of seeing the \nembarrassment given them by their principle against war, whenever \napplication was made to them, by order of the crown, to grant aids for \nmilitary purposes. They were unwilling to offend government, on the one \nhand, by a direct refusal, and their friends, the body of the Quakers, \non the other, by a compliance contrary to their principles; hence a \nvariety of evasions to avoid complying, and modes of disguising the \ncompliance when it became unavoidable. The common mode at last was to \ngrant money under the phrase of its being “for the king’s use,” never to inquie how it was applied."}
\nBut if the demand was not directly from crown, that phrase was found not\n so proper, and some other was to be invented. As, when powder was \nwanting (I think it was for the garrison at Louisburg), and the \ngovernment of New England, solicited a grant of some from Pennsylvania, \nwhich was much urged on the House by Governor Thomas, they could not \ngrant money to buy powder, because that was an ingredient of war; but \nthey voted an aid to New England of three thousand pounds, to be put \ninto the hands of the governor, and appropriated it for the purchasing \nof bread, flour, wheat, or other grain. Some of the council, \ndesirous of giving the House still further embarrassment, advised the \ngovernor not to accept provision, as not being the thing he had \ndemanded; but he replied, “I shall take the money, for I understand very\n well their meaning; other grain is gunpowder,” which he accordingly \nbought, and they never objected to it.1
\nIt was in allusion to this fact that, when in our fire company we feared\n the success of our proposal in favor of the lottery, and I had said to \nmy friend Mr. Syng, one of our members, “If we fail, let us move the \npurchase of a fire-engine with the money; the Quakers can have no \nobjection to that; and then, if you nominate me and I you as a committee\n for that purpose, we will buy a great gun, which is certainly a fire-engine” “I\n see,” says he, “you have improved by being so long in the Assembly; \nyour equivocal project would be just a match for their wheat or other grain.”