QUAKERS BUY WEST NEW JERSEY.

357

XVI.

483, 484,

356.

narrowly escaped death. The despised people braved CHAP. every danger to continue their assemblies. Haled out by violence, they returned. When their meeting-houses Bra were torn down, they gathered openly on the ruins. They could not be dissolved by armed men; and when their opposers took shovels to throw rubbish on them, they stood close together, "willing to have been buried alive, witnessing for the Lord." They were exceeding great sufferers for their profession, and in some cases treated worse than the worst of the race. They were as poor sheep appointed to the slaughter, and as a people killed all day long.

Fox,

Pref. vii. 10.

Mar.

Is it strange that they looked beyond the Atlantic 1674. for a refuge? When New Netherlands was recovered from the United Provinces, Berkeley and Carteret entered again into possession of their province. For Berkeley, already a very old man, the visions of colonial fortune had not been realized; there was nothing before him but contests for quitrents with settlers resolved on governing themselves; and in March, 1674, a few 1674. months after the return of George Fox from his pil- 18. grimage to all our colonies from Carolina to Rhode Island, the haughty peer, for a thousand pounds, sold the moiety of New Jersey to Quakers, to John Fenwick in trust for Edward Byllinge and his assigns. A dispute between Byllinge and Fenwick was allayed by the benevolent decision of William Penn; and in 1675, 1675. Fenwick, with a large company and several families, set sail in the Griffith for the asylum of Friends. Ascending the Delaware, he landed on a pleasant, fertile spot, and as the outward world easily takes the hues of men's minds, he called the place Salem, for it seemed the dwelling-place of peace.

Byllinge was embarrassed in his fortunes; Gawen

358

QUAKER SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.

XVI.

CHAP. Laurie, William Penn, and Nicholas Lucas, became his assigns as trustees for his creditors, and shares in the undivided moiety of New Jersey were offered for sale. As an affair of property, it was like our land companies of to-day; except that in those days speculators bought acres by the hundred thousand. But the Quakers wished more; they desired to possess a territory where they could institute a government; and Carteret readily agreed to a division, for his partners left him the best 1676. of the bargain. And now that the men who had gone 26. about to turn the world upside down, were possessed

Aug.

of a province, what system of politics would they adopt? The light, that lighteth every man, shone brightly in the Pilgrims of Plymouth, the Calvinists of Hooker and Haynes, and in the freemen of Virginia, when the transient abolition of monarchy compelled even royalists to look from the throne to a surer guide in the heart; the Quakers, following the same exalted instincts, could but renew the fundamental legislation of the men of the Mayflower, of Hartford, and of the Old Dominion. "The CONCESSIONS are such as Friends approve of;" this is the message of the Quaker proprietaries in England to the few who had emigrated: "We lay a foundation for after ages to understand their liberty as Christians and as men, that they may not be brought into bondage, but by their own consent; for we put THE POWER IN THE 1677. PEOPLE." And on the third day of March, 1677, the 3. charter, or fundamental laws, of West New Jersey

Mar.

were perfected and published. They are written with almost as much method as our present constitutions, and recognize the principle of democratic equality as unconditionally and universally as the Quaker society itself.

QUAKER TREATY WITH NEW JERSEY INDIANS.

359

XVI.

Smith,

528--539.

81.

No man, nor number of men, hath power over con- CHAP. science. No person shall at any time, in any ways, or on any pretence, be called in question, or in the least 1677. punished or hurt for opinion in religion.-The general assembly shall be chosen, not by the confused way of cries and voices, but by the balloting box.-Every man is capable to choose or be chosen.-The electors shall give their respective deputies instructions at large, which these, in their turn, by indentures under hand and seal, shall bind themselves to obey.. The disobedient deputy may be questioned before the assembly by any one of his electors. Each member is to be allowed one shilling a day, to be paid by his immediate constituents, "that he may be known as the servant of the people."-The executive power rested with ten commissioners, to be appointed by the assembly; justices and constables were chosen directly by the people; the judges, appointed by the general assembly, retained office but two years at the most, and sat in the courts but as assistants to the jury. In the twelve men, and in them only, judgment resides; in them and in the general assembly rests discretion as to punishments. "All and every person in the province, shall, by the help of the Lord and these fundamentals, be free from oppression and slavery." No man can be imprisoned for debt. Courts were to be managed without the necessity of an attorney or counsellor. The native was protected against encroachments; the helpless orphan educated by the state.

Immediately the English Quakers, with the good wishes of Charles II., flocked to West New Jersey, and commissioners, possessing a temporary authority, were sent to administer affairs, till a popular government could be instituted. When the vessel, freighted with

360

XVI.

QUAKER CONTROVERSY WITH THE DUKE OF YORK.

CHAP. the men of peace, arrived in America, Andros, the governor of New York, claimed jurisdiction over their 1677. territory. The claim, which, on the feudal system, was perhaps a just one, was compromised as a present question, and referred for decision to England. Meantime lands were purchased of the Indians; the planters numbered nearly four hundred souls; and already at Burlington, under a tent covered with sail-cloth, the Quakers began to hold religious meetings.' The Indian kings also gathered in council under the shades of the 1678. Burlington forests, and declared their joy at the prospect of permanent peace. "You are our brothers," said the sachems, "and we will live like brothers with you. We will have a broad path for you and us to walk in. If an Englishman falls asleep in this path, the Indian shall pass him by, and say, He is an Englishman; he is asleep; let him alone. The path shall be plain; there shall not be in it a stump to hurt the feet."2

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Every thing augured success to the colony, but that, at Newcastle, the agent of the duke of York, who still possessed Delaware, exacted customs of the ships ascending to New Jersey. It may have been honestly believed, that his jurisdiction included the whole river; when urgent remonstrances were made, the duke freely referred the question to a disinterested commission.

The argument of the Quakers breathes the spirit of Anglo-Saxons.

1678 "An express grant of the powers of government 1680. induced us to buy the moiety of New Jersey. If we could not assure people of an easy, free, and safe government, liberty of conscience, and an inviolable pos

1 Haz. Reg. vi. 182.

2 Smith's New Jersey, 100.

QUAKER CONTROVERSY WITH THE DUKE OF YORK. 361

XVI.

session of their civil rights and freedoms, a mere wilder- CHAP. ness would be no encouragement. It were madness to leave a free country to plant a wilderness, and give 1678 another person an absolute title to tax us at will.

"The customs imposed by the government of New York are not a burden only, but a wrong. By what right are we thus used? The king of England cannot take his subjects' goods without their consent. This is a home-born right, declared to be law by divers

statutes.

"To give up the right of making laws is to change the government and resign ourselves to the will of another. The land belongs to the natives; of the duke we buy nothing but the right of an undisturbed colonizing, with the expectation of some increase of the freedoms enjoyed in our native country. We have not lost English liberty by leaving England.

"The tax is a surprise on the planter: it is paying for the same thing twice over. Custom, levied upon planting, is unprecedented. Besides, there is no end of this power. By this precedent, we are assessed without law, and excluded from our English right of common assent to taxes. We can call nothing our own, but are tenants at will, not for the soil only, but for our personal estates. Such conduct has destroyed government, but never raised one to true greatness.

"Lastly, to exact such unterminated tax from English planters, and to continue it after so many repeated complaints, will be the greatest evidence of a design to introduce, if the crown should ever devolve upon the duke, an unlimited government in England."

Such was the argument of the Quakers; and it was triumphant. Sir William Jones decided that, as the

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1680.