George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 2, 17th edition.

[367] faithful to the good old republican cause, and deriving

Chap XVI.} 1682 May 5.

still better guidance from the suavity and humanity of his Quaker brethren, Penn published a frame of government, not as an established constitution, but as a system¹ to be referred to the freemen in Pennsylvania

About the same time, a free society of traders was

May 29.

organized. ‘It is a very unusual society,’—such was their advertisement,—‘for it is an absolute free one, and in a free country; every one may be concerned that will, and yet have the same liberty of private traffique, as though there were no society at all.’²

Thus the government and commercial prosperity of the colony were founded in freedom; to perfect his territory, Penn desired to possess the bay, the river, and the shore of the Delaware to the ocean. The territories or three lower counties, now forming the state of Delaware, were in possession of the duke of York, and, from the conquest of New Netherlands, had been esteemed an appendage to his province. His claim, arising from conquest and possession, had the informal assent of the king and the privy council, and had extended even to the upper Swedish settlements. It was not difficult to obtain from the duke a release of his claim on Pennsylvania; and, after much negotiation,

Aug 24

the lower province was granted by two deeds of feoffment.³ From the forty-third degree of latitude to the Atlantic, the western and southern banks of Delaware River and Bay were under the dominion of William Penn.

Every arrangement for a voyage to his province being finished, Penn, in a beautiful letter, took leave