Every day brought news of massacres of tens, fifties, and even hundreds of persons, but the assembly remained obstinate; until the mayor, aldermen, and principal citizens clamoured against them, and four thousand frontiersmen started on their march to Philadelphia, to compel them to take measures for defence.
Bodies of massacred men were brought from the frontier villages and paraded through the town, and so threatening became the aspect of the population, that the Assembly of Quakers were at last obliged to pass a militia law.

It was, however, an absolutely useless one.

It specially excepted the Quakers from service, and constrained nobody, but declared it lawful for such as chose to form themselves into companies, and to elect officers by ballot.

The company officers might, if they saw fit, elect, also by ballot, colonels, lieutenant colonels, and majors.

These last might then, in conjunction with the governor, frame articles of war, to which, however, no officer or man was to be subjected, unless, after three days' consideration, he subscribed them in presence of a justice of the peace, and declared his willingness to be bound by them.
This mockery of a bill, drawn by Benjamin Franklin while the savages were raging in the colony and the smoke of a hundred villages was ascending to the skies, was received with indignation by the people, and this rose to such a height that the Assembly must have yielded unconditionally, had not a circumstance occurred which gave them a decent pretext for retreat.
The governor informed them that he had just received a letter from the proprietors, as Penn's heirs were called, giving to the province five thousand pounds to aid in its defence, on condition that the money should be accepted as a free gift, and not as their proportion of any tax that was or might be laid by the Assembly.
Thereupon, the Assembly struck out the clause taxing the proprietory estates, and the governor signed the bill.