[1683 A.D.]

tunate one. Had the Quakers planted their colony on the banks of the St. Lawrence, or among the warlike tribes of New England, their shaking of hands and assurances of tender regard would not long have availed to save them from the visitations of the scalping-knife. But the Delawares, the people on whose territory they had settled, were like themselves debarred the use of arms. The Iroquois had conquered them, disarmed them, and forced them to adopt the opprobrious name of "women." The humble Delawares were but too happy to receive the hand extended to them, and dwell in friendship with their pacific neighbours; since to have lifted the hatchet would have brought upon their heads the vengeance of their conquerors, whose good will Penn had taken pains to secure.1

The sons of Penn, his successors in the proprietorship of the province, did not evince the same kindly feeling towards the Indians which had distinguished their father. Earnest to acquire new lands, they commenced through their agents a series of unjust measures, which gradually alienated the Indians, and, after a peace of seventy years, produced a disastrous rupture. The Quaker population of the colony sympathised in the kindness which its founder had cherished towards the benighted race. This feeling was strengthened by years of friendly intercourse; and, except where private interest was concerned, the Quakers made good their reiterated professions of attachment. Kindness to the Indian was the glory of their sect.r

In the year 1683 Penn often met the Indians in council, and at their festivals. He visited them in their cabins, shared the hospitable banquet of hominy and roasted acorns, and laughed and frolicked, and practised athletic games with the light-hearted, mirthful, confiding red men.2 He touched the secret springs of sympathy, and succeeding generations on the Susquehanna acknowledged his loveliness.

Peace existed with the natives; the contentment of the emigrants was made perfect by the happy inauguration of the government. A general convention had been permitted by Penn (December 4th to 7th, 1682). The people preferred to appear by their representatives; and in three days the work of preparatory legislation at Chester was finished. The charter from the king did not include the territories; these were now enfranchised by the joint act of the inhabitants and the proprietary, and united with Pennsylvania on the basis of equal rights. The freedom of all the inhabitants being thus confirmed, the Inward Voice, which was the celestial visitant to the Quakers, dictated a code. God was declared the only Lord of conscience; the first day of the week was reserved, as a day of leisure, for the ease of the creation. The rule of equality was introduced into families by abrogating the privileges of primogeniture. The word of an honest man was evidence without an oath. The mad spirit of speculation was checked by a system of strict accountability, applied to factors and agents. Every man liable to civil burdens possessed the right of suffrage; and, without regard to sect, every Christian was eligible to office. No tax or custom could be levied but by law. The Quaker is a spiritualist; the pleasures of the senses, masks, revels, and stage-plays, not less than bull-baits and cock-fights, were prohibited. Murder was the only crime punishable by death. Marriage was esteemed a civil contract; adultery a felony. The Quakers had suffered from wrong imprisonment; the false accuser was liable to double damages. Every prison for convicts was made a workhouse. There were neither poor rates nor 'He paid twice for his lands; once to the Iroquois, who claimed them by right of conquest, and once to their occupants, the Delawares.

[Watson quotes an eyewitness who said she saw Penn outdance all the Indians.]

[1683-1687 A.D.] tithes. The Swedes and Finns and Dutch were invested with the liberties of Englishmen.

The government having been organised, William Penn, accompanied by members of his council, hastened to West River, to interchange courtesies with Lord Baltimore, and fix the limits of their respective provinces (December 11th). A discussion of three days led to no result; tired of useless debates, Penn crossed the Chesapeake to visit Friends at Choptank, and returned to his own province, prepared to renew negotiation, or to submit to arbitration in England.

PENN FOUNDS PHILADELPHIA

He now selected a site for a city, purchased the ground of the Swedes, and in a situation "not surpassed" such are his words-"by one among all the many places he had seen in the world," on a neck of land between the Schuylkill and Delaware, appointed for a town by the convenience of the rivers, the firmness of the land, the pure springs and salubrious air, William Penn laid out Philadelphia, the city of refuge, the mansion of freedom, the home of humanity. But vast as were the hopes of the humble Friends, who now marked the boundaries of streets on the chestnut or ash and walnut trees of the original forest, they were surpassed by the reality. Pennsylvania bound the northern and the southern colonies in bonds stronger than paper chains; Philadelphia was the birthplace of American independence and the pledge of union.

March 12th, 1683, the infant city, in which there could have been few mansions but hollow trees, was already the scene of legislation. From each of the six counties into which Penn's dominions were divided, nine representatives, Swedes, Dutch, and Quaker preachers, of Wales and Ireland and England, were elected for the purpose of establishing a charter of liberties. They desired it might be the acknowledged growth of the New World, and bear date in Philadelphia. When the general assembly came together, Penn referred to the frame of government proposed in England, saying, "You may amend, alter, or add; I am ready to settle such foundations as may be for your happiness."

THE FRAME OF GOVERNMENT (1687 A.D.)

The constitution which was established created a legislative council and a more numerous assembly; the former to be elected for three years, one-third being renewed annually; the assembly to be annually chosen. Rotation in office was enjoined. The theory of the constitution gave to the governor and council the initiation of all laws; these were to be promulgated to the people; and the office of the assembly was designed to be no more than to report the decision of the people in their primary meetings. Thus no law could be enacted but with the direct assent of the whole community. Such was the system of the charter of liberties. But it received modifications from the legislature by which it was established. The assembly set the precedent of engaging in debate, and of proposing subjects for bills by way of conference with the governor and council. In return, by unanimous vote a negative voice was allowed the governor on all the doings of the council, and such a power was virtually a right to negative any law. It had been more simple to have left the assembly full power to originate bills, and to the governor an unconditional negative. This was virtually the method estab

[1687 A.D.] lished in 1683; it was distinctly recognised in the fundamental law in 1696. Besides, the charter from Charles II held the proprietary responsible for colonial legislation; and no act of provincial legislation could be perfected till it had passed the great seal of the province. That a negative voice was thus reserved to William Penn, was, we believe, the opinion of the colonists of that day; such was certainly the intention of the royal charter, and was necessary, unless the proprietary relation was to cease. In other respects, the frame of government gave all power to the people; the judges were to be nominated by the provincial council, and, in case of good behaviour, could not be removed by the proprietary during the term for which they were commissioned.

But for the hereditary office of proprietary, Pennsylvania had been a representative democracy. In Maryland, the council was named by Lord Baltimore; in Pennsylvania, by the people. In Maryland, the power of appointing magistrates, and all, even the subordinate executive officers, rested solely with the proprietary; in Pennsylvania, William Penn could not appoint a justice or a constable; every executive officer, except the highest, was elected by the people or their representatives; and the governor could perform no public act, but with the consent of the council. Lord Baltimore had a revenue derived from the export of tobacco, the staple of Maryland; and his colony was burdened with taxes; a similar revenue was offered to William Penn, and declined; and tax-gatherers were unknown in his province.

In the name of all the freemen of the province, the charter was received by the assembly with gratitude, as one of more than expected liberty." "I desired," says Penn, "to show men as free and as happy as they can be." In the decline of life, the language of his heart was still the same. “If, in the relation between us," he writes in his old age, "the people want of me anything that would make them happier, I should readily grant it."

To the charter which Locke invented for Carolina, the palatines voted an immutable immortality; and it never gained more than a short, partial existence. To the people of his province Penn left it free to subvert or alter the frame of government; and its essential principles remain to this day without change. Such was the birth of popular power in Pennsylvania and Delaware. It remained to dislodge superstition from its hiding-places in the mind. The Scandinavian emigrants came from their native forests with imaginations clouded by the gloomy terrors of an invisible world of fiends; and a turbulent woman was brought to trial as a witch. Penn presided, and the Quakers on the jury outnumbered the Swedes. The jury, having listened to the charge from the governor, returned this verdict: "The prisoner is guilty of the common fame of being a witch, but not guilty as she stands indicted." The friends of the liberated prisoner were required to give bonds that she should keep the peace; and in Penn's domain, from that day to this, neither demon nor hag ever rode through the air on goat or broomstick; and the worst arts of conjuration went no farther than to foretell fortunes, mutter powerful spells over quack medicines, or discover by the divining rod the hidden treasures of the buccaneers.

RAPID GROWTH OF PENNSYLVANIA

Meantime the news spread abroad, that William Penn, the Quaker, had opened "an asylum to the good and the oppressed of every nation"; and humanity went through Europe, gathering the children of misfortune. From

[1687-1761 A.D.] England and Wales, from Scotland and Ireland, and the Low Countries, emigrants crowded to the land of promise. On the banks of the Rhine it was whispered that the plans of Gustavus Adolphus and Oxenstierna were consummated; new companies were formed under better auspices than those of the Swedes; and from the highlands above Worms, the humble people who had melted at the eloquence of Penn, the Quaker emissary, renounced their German homes for the protection of the Quaker king. There is nothing in the history of the human race like the confidence which the simple virtues and institutions of William Penn inspired. The progress of his province was more rapid than the progress of New England. In three years from its foundation, Philadelphia gained more than New York had done in half a century. This was the happiest season in the public life of William Penn. "I must, without vanity, say"-such was his honest exultation-"I have led the greatest colony into America that ever any man did upon a private credit, and the most prosperous beginnings that ever were in it are to be found amongst us."

The mission of William Penn was accomplished; and now, like Solon, the most humane of ancient legislators, he prepared to leave the commonwealth of which he had founded the happiness. Intrusting the great seal to his friend Lloyd, and the executive power to a committee of the council, Penn sailed for England (August 12th, 1684), leaving freedom to its own development. His departure was happy for the colony and for his own tranquillity. He had established a democracy, and was himself a feudal sovereign. The two elements in the government were incompatible; and for ninety years the civil history of Pennsylvania is but the account of the jarring of these opposing interests, to which there could be no happy issue but in popular independence. But rude collisions were not yet begun; and the benevolence of William Penn breathed to his people a farewell, unclouded by apprehension. "My love and my life are to you and with you, and no water can quench it, nor disturbance bring it to an end. I have been with you, cared over you, and served you with unfeigned love; and you are beloved of me and dear to me beyond utterance. And thou, Philadelphia, the virgin settlement of this province, my soul prays to God for thee, that thou mayest stand in the day of trial, and that thy children may be blessed. Dear friends, my love salutes you all."

The question respecting the boundaries between the domains of Lord Baltimore and of William Penn was promptly resumed before the committee of trade and plantations; and, after many hearings, it was decided that the tract of Delaware did not constitute a part of Maryland. The proper boundaries of the territory remained to be settled; and the present limits of Delaware were established by a compromise.

This decision formed the basis of an agreement between the respective heirs of the two proprietaries in 1732. Three years afterwards the subject became a question in chancery; in 1750 the present boundaries were decreed by Lord Hardwicke; ten years afterwards they were, by agreement, more accurately defined; and in 1761 the line between Maryland and Pennsylvania towards the west was run by Mason and Dixon. Delaware lies between the same parallels with Maryland; and Quakerism did not exempt it from negro slavery.

But the care of colonial property did not absorb the enthusiasm of Penn; and, now that his father's friend had succeeded to the throne, he employed his fortune, his influence, and his fame to secure that "impartial" liberty of conscience which, for nearly twenty years, he had advocated, with Buck

[1687-1761 A.D.]

ingham and Arlington, before the magistrates of Ireland, and English juries, in the Tower, in Newgate, before the commons of England, in public discussions with Baxter and the Presbyterians, before Quaker meetings, at Chester and Philadelphia, and through the press to the world. It was his old post -the office to which he was faithful from youth to age. Fifteen thousand families had been ruined for dissent since the restoration; five thousand persons had died victims to imprisonment. The monarch was persuaded to exercise his prerogative of mercy; and at Penn's intercession, in 1686, not less than twelve hundred Friends were liberated from the horrible dungeons and prisons where many of them had languished hopelessly for years. Penn delighted in doing good. His house was thronged by swarms of clients, envoys from Massachusetts among the number; and sometimes there were two hundred at once claiming his disinterested good offices with the king. For Locke, then a voluntary exile, and the firm friend of intellectual freedom, he obtained a promise of immunity, which the blameless philosopher, in the just pride of innocence, refused. And at the very time when the Roman Catholic Fénelon, in France, was pleading for Protestants against the intolerance of Louis XIV, the Protestant Penn, in England, was labouring to rescue the Roman Catholics from the jealousy of the English aristocracy. The political tracts of "the arch Quaker" have the calm wisdom and the universality of Lord Bacon; in behalf of liberty of conscience, they beautifully connect the immutable principles of human nature and human rights with the character and origin of English freedom, and exhaust the question as a subject for English legislation. Penn never gave counsel at variance with popular rights. He resisted the commitment of the bishops to the Tower, and, on the day of the birth of the prince of Wales, pressed the king exceedingly to set them at liberty. His private correspondence proves that he esteemed parliament the only power through which his end could be gained. England to-day confesses his sagacity, and is doing honour to his genius. He came too soon for success, and he was aware of it. After more than a century, the laws which he reproved began gradually to be repealed; and the principle which he developed, sure of immortality, began slowly but firmly asserting its power over the legislation of Great Britain.

The political connections of William Penn have involved him in the obloquy which followed the overthrow of the Stuarts; and the friends to the tests, comprising nearly all the members of both the political parties, into which England was soon divided, have generally been unfriendly to his good name. But their malice has been without permanent effect. Their final award is given freely, and cannot be shaken. Every charge of hypocrisy, of selfishness, of vanity, of dissimulation, of credulous confidence; every form of reproach, from virulent abuse to cold apology; every ill name, from tory and Jesuit to blasphemer and infidel-has been used against Penn; but the candor of his character always triumphed over calumny. His name was safely cherished as a household word in the cottages of Wales and Ireland, and among the peasantry of Germany; and not a tenant of a wigwam from the sea to the Susquehanna doubted his integrity. His fame is now wide as the world; he is one of the few who have gained abiding glory.

Was he prospered? Before engaging in his American enterprise, he had impaired his patrimony to relieve the suffering Quakers; his zeal for his provinces hurried him into colonial expenses beyond the returns;1 his

[While the Pennsylvanians were jealously reaching out for enlarged liberties, Penn wrote to them: "I am sorry at heart for your animosities. For the love of God, me, and the poor country, be not so governmentish, so noisy and open in your dissatisfactions." He