[Galloway], Considerations upon the American Enquiry

Joseph Galloway was born into a wealthy Maryland planter family but moved to Philadelphia to practise law in 1747. He was elected to the Pennsylvania assembly in 1756, though he and Benjamin Franklin lost their seats in 1764 following an attempt to replace the Penn proprietorship with royal rule. He regained his seat the following September and became speaker of the assembly. He was also vice-president of the American Philosophical Society from 1769 until 1775. He was appointed superintendent-general for the maintenance of peace in Philadelphia during the city’s occupation in 1777–8, but in March 1778 was evacuated to New York and later to London with his family where he became a leading loyalist spokesman, authoring his Considerations upon the American Enquiry shortly after his arrival. Little wonder, then, that Galloway’s Considerations opens by stating that ‘The present is an alarming moment’.