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I have thought fit, upon my further stop in these parts,
to throw all into your hands, that you may see the confidence I have in you, and the desire I have to give
you all possible contentment.’
And, as the council of his province was, at that time, elected directly by the people, that body collectively was constituted his
deputy. Of its members,
Thomas Lloyd, from
North Wales, an Oxford scholar, was universally beloved as a bright example of the integrity of virtue.
The path of preferment had opened to him in
England, but he chose rather the internal peace that springs from ‘mental felicity.’
This
Quaker preacher, the oracle of ‘the patriot rustics’ on the
Delaware, was now, by free suffrage, constituted president of the council.
But the lower counties were jealous of the superior weight of
Pennsylvania; disputes respecting appointments to
office grew up; the council divided; protests ensued;
the members from the territories withdrew, and would not be reconciled; so that, with the reluctant consent of
William Penn, who, though oppressed with persecutions and losses, never distrusted the people of his province, and always endured hardships as though they ‘were, in the end, every way for good,’ the lower counties were constituted a separate government under
Markham.
Thus did the commonwealth of
Delaware begin an independent existence.
It was the act of its own citizens.
Uncertainty rested on the institutions of the prov-
inces; an apparent schism among the Quakers increased the gloom.
Who denies that the heart of man is deceitful, and desperately wicked?
Often an apostate from a party, in the incipient stages of apostasy, is unconscious of his change; and the delusions of selfove nurse the belief that the perverse community from
