[
326]
Chapter 16:
The people called Quakers in the United States.
The nobler instincts of humanity are the same in
every age and in every breast.
The exalted hopes, that have dignified former generations of men, will be renewed as long as the human heart shall throb.
The visions of
Plato are but revived in the dreams of Sir Thomas More.
A spiritual unity binds together every member of the human family; and every heart contains an incorruptible seed, capable of springing up and producing all that man can know of God, and duty, and the soul.
An inward voice, uncreated by schools, independent of refinement, opens to the unlettered hind, not less than to the polished scholar, a sure pathway into the enfranchisements of immortal truth.
This is the faith of the people called Quakers.
A moral principle is tested by the attempt to reduce it to practice.
The history of
European civilization is the history of the gradual enfranchisement of classes of society.
The feudal sovereign was limited by the power of the military chieftains, whose valor achieved his conquests.
The vast and increasing importance of commercial transactions gave new value to the municipal privileges of which the
Roman empire had bequeathed the precedents; while the intricate questions that were perpetually arising for adjudication, crowded the ignorant
[
327]
military magistrate from the bench, and reserved
the wearisome toil of deliberation for the learning of his clerk.
The emancipation of the country people followed.
In every
European code, the ages of feudal influence, of mercantile ambition, of the enfranchisement of the yeomanry, appear distinctly in succession.
It is the peculiar glory of
England, that her free people always had a share in the government.
From the first, her freeholders had legislative power as well as freedom; and the tribunals were subjected to popular influence by the institution of a jury.
The majority of her laborers were serfs; many husbandmen were bondmen, as the name implies; but the established liberties of freeholders quickened, in every part of
England, the instinct for popular advancement.
The
Norman invasion could not uproot the ancient institutions; they lived in the heart of the nation, and rose superior to the
Conquest.
The history of
England is therefore marked by an original, constant and increasing political activity of the people.
In the fourteenth century, the peasantry, conducted by tilers, and carters, and ploughmen, demanded of their young king a deliverance from the bondage and burdens of feudal oppression; in the fifteenth century, the last traces of villenage were wiped away; in the sixteenth, the noblest ideas of human destiny, awakening in the common mind, became the central points round which plebeian sects were gathered; in the seventeenth century, the enfranchised yeomanry began to feel an instinct for dominion; and its kindling ambition, quickly fanned to a flame, would not rest till it had attempted a democratic revolution.
The best soldiers of the Long Parliament were country people; the men that turned the battle on
Marston Moor
[
328]
were farmers and farmers' sons, fighting, as they be-
lieved, for their own cause.
The progress from the rout of
Wat Tyler to the victories of
Naseby, and
Worcester, and
Dunbar, was made in less than three centuries. So rapid was the diffusion of ideas of freedom, so palpable was the advancement of popular intelligence, energy, and happiness, that to whole classes of enthusiasts the day of perfect enfranchisement seemed to have dawned; legislation, ceasing to be partial, was to be reformed and renewed on general principles, and the reign of justice and reason was about to begin.
In the language of that age,
Christ's kingdom on earth, his second coming, was at hand.
Under the excitement of hopes, created by the rapid progress of liberty, which, to the common mind, was an inexplicable mystery, the blissful centuries of the millennium promised to open upon a favored world.
Political enfranchisements had been followed by the emancipation of knowledge.
The powers of nature were freely examined; the merchants always tolerated or favored the pursuits of science.
Galileo had been safe at
Venice, and honored at
Amsterdam or
London.
The method of free inquiry, applied to chemistry, had invented gunpowder and changed the manners of the feudal aristocracy; applied to geography, had discovered a hemisphere, and, circumnavigating the globe, made the theatre of commerce wide as the world; applied to the mechanical process of multiplying books, had brought the New Testament, in the vulgar tongue, within the reach of every class; applied to the rights of persons and property, had, for the
English, built up a system of common law, and given securities to liberty in the interpretation of contracts.
Under the guidance of
Bacon, the inductive method, in its freedom, was
[
329]
about to investigate the laws of the outward world,
and reveal the wonders of divine Providence as displayed in the visible universe.
On the continent of
Europe,
Descartes had already
applied the method of observation and free inquiry to the study of morals and the mind; in
England,
Bacon hardly proceeded beyond the province of natural philosophy.
He compared the subtile visions, in which the
contemplative soul indulges, to the spider's web, and sneered at them as frivolous and empty; but the spider's web is essential to the spider's well-being, and for his neglect of the inner voice,
Bacon paid the terrible penalty of a life disgraced by flattery, selfishness, and mean compliance.
Freedom, as applied to morals, was cherished in
England among the people, and therefore had its development in religion.
The Anglo-Saxons were a religious people.
Henry II.
had as little superstitious regard for the
Roman see as Henry VIII.; but the oppressed Anglo-Saxons looked for shelter to the church, and invoked the enthusiasm of
Thomas a Becket to fetter the Norman tyrant and bind the Norman aristocracy in iron shackles.
The enthusiast fell a victim to the church and to Anglo-
Saxon liberty.
If, from the day of his death, the hierarchy abandoned the cause of the people, that cause always found advocates in the inferior clergy; and
Wickliffe did not fear to deny dominion to vice and to claim it for justice.
The reformation appeared, and the inferior clergy, rising against
Rome and against domestic tyranny, had a common faith and common political cause with the people A body of the yeomanry, becoming Independents, planted
Plymouth colony.
The inferior gentry espoused Calvinism, and fled to
Massachusetts.
The popular movement of intellectual liberty is measured by advances
[
330]
towards the liberty of prophesying, and the
liberty of conscience.
The moment was arrived when the plebeian mind should make its boldest effort to escape from hereditary prejudices; when the freedom of
Bacon, the enthusiasm of
Wickliffe, and the politics of
Wat Tyler, were to gain the highest unity in a sect; when a popular, and, therefore, in that age, a religious party, building upon a divine principle, should demand freedom of mind, purity of morals, and universal enfranchisement.
The sect had its birth in a period of intense public activity—when the heart of
England was swelling with passions, and the public mind turbulent with factious leaders; when zeal for reform was invading the church, subverting the throne, and repealing the privileges of feudalism; when Presbyterians in every village were quarrelling with Anabaptists and Independents, and all with the
Roman Catholics and the English church.
The sect could arise only among the common people, who had every thing to gain by its success, and the least to hazard by its failure.
The privileged classes had no motive to develop a principle before which their privileges would crumble.
‘Poor mechanics,’
Penn, i. 346, 353, ed. 1825. |
said
William Penn, ‘are wont to be God's great ambassadors to mankind.’
‘He hath raised up a few despicable and illiterate men,’ said the accomplished
Barclay, ‘to dispense the more full glad tidings reserved for our age.’
It was the comfort of the Quakers, that they received the truth from a simple sort of people, unmixed with the learning of schools; and almost for the first time in the history of the world, a plebeian
sect proceeded to the complete enfranchisement of mind, teaching the
English yeomanry the same method
[
331]
of free inquiry which
Socrates had explained to the
young men of
Athens.
The simplicity of truth was restored by humble instruments, and its first messenger was of low degree.
George Fox, the son of ‘righteous Christopher,’ a Leicestershire weaver, by his mother descended from the stock of the martyrs, distinguished even in boyhood by frank inflexibility and deep religious feeling, became in early life an apprentice to a Nottingham shoemaker, who was also a landholder, and, like David, and Tamerlane, and Sixtus V., was set by his employer to watch sheep.
The occupation was grateful to his mind, for its freedom, innocency, and solitude; and the years of earliest youth passed away in prayer and reading the
Bible, frequent fasts, and the reveries of contemplative
devotion. His boyish spirit yearned after excellence; and he was haunted by a vague desire of an unknown, illimitable good.
In the most stormy period of the
English democratic revolution, just as the Independents were beginning to make head successfully against the Presbyterians, when the impending ruin of royalty and the hierarchy made republicanism the doctrine of a party, and inspiration the faith of fanatics, the mind of
Fox, as it revolved the question of human destiny, was agitated even to despair.
The melancholy natural to youth heightened his anguish; abandoning his flocks and his shoemaker's bench, he nourished his inexplicable grief by retired meditations, and often walking solitary in the chase, sought in the gloom of the forest
for a vision of God.
He questioned his life; but his blameless life was ignorant of remorse.
He went to many ‘priests’ for comfort, but found no comfort from them.
His misery urged him to visit
London; and there the religious
[
332]
feuds convinced him that the great professors were
dark.
He returned to the country, where some advised him to marry, others to join
Cromwell's army; but his excited mind continued its conflicts; and, as other young men have done from love, his restless spirit drove him into the fields, where he walked many nights long by himself in misery too great to be declared.
Yet at times a ray of heavenly joy beamed upon his soul, and he reposed, as it were, serenely on Abraham's bosom.
He had been bred in the church of England. One
day, the thought rose in his mind, that a man might be bred at
Oxford or
Cambridge, and yet be unable to
explain the great problem of existence.
Again he reflected that God lives not in temples of brick and stone, but in the hearts of the living; and from the parish
priest and the parish church, he turned to the dissenters.
But among them he found the most experienced unable to reach his condition.
Neither could the pursuit of wealth detain his mind
from its struggle for fixed truth.
His desires were those which wealth could not satisfy.
A king's diet, palace, and attendance, had been to him as nothing.
Rejecting ‘the changeable ways of religious sects’, the ‘brittle notions’ and airy theories of philosophy, he longed for ‘unchangeable truth,’ a firm foundation
of morals in the soul.
His inquiring mind was gently led along to principles of endless and eternal love; light dawned within him; and though the world was rocked by tempests of opinion, his secret and as yet unconscious belief was firmly stayed by the anchor
of hope.
The strong mind of
George Fox had already risen above the prejudices of sects.
The greatest danger
[
333]
remained.
Liberty may be pushed to dissoluteness, and
freedom is the fork in the road where the by-way leads to infidelity.
One morning, as
Fox sat silently by the fire, a cloud came over his mind; a baser instinct seemed to say, ‘All things come by nature;’ and the elements and the stars oppressed his imagination with a vision of pantheism.
But as he continued musing, a true voice arose within him, and said, ‘There is a living God.’
At once the clouds of skepticism rolled away; mind triumphed over matter, and the depths of conscience were cheered and irradiated by light from
heaven.
His soul enjoyed the sweetness of repose, and he came up in spirit from the agony of doubt into the paradise of contemplation.
Having listened to the revelation which had been made to his soul, he thirsted for a reform in every branch of learning.
The physician should quit the strife of words, and solve the appearances of nature by an intimate study of the higher laws of being.
The priests, rejecting authority and giving up the trade in knowledge, should seek oracles of truth in the purity of conscience.
The lawyers, abandoning their chi-
canery, should tell their clients plainly, that he who wrongs his neighbor does a wrong to himself.
The
heavenly-minded man was become a divine and a naturalist, and all of God Almighty's making.
Thus did the mind of
George Fox arrive at the conclusion, that truth is to be sought by listening to the voice of God in the soul.
Not the learning of the universities, not the
Roman see, not the English church, not dissenters, not the whole outward world, can lead to a fixed rule of morality.
The law in the heart must be received without prejudice, cherished without mixture and obeyed without fear.
[
334]
Such was the spontaneous wisdom by which he was
guided.
It was the clear light of reason, dawning as through a cloud.
Confident that his name was written in the
Lamb's book of life, he was borne, by an irrepressible impulse, to go forth into the briery and brambly world, and publish the glorious principles which had rescued him from despair and infidelity, and given him a clear perception of the immutable distinctions between right and wrong.
At the very crisis when the house of commons was abolishing monarchy and the peerage, about two years and a half from the day when
Cromwell went on his knees to kiss the hand of the young boy who was duke of
York, the
Lord, who sent
George Fox into the world, forbade him to put off his hat to any, high or low; and he was required to
thee and
thou all men and women, without
any respect to rich or poor, to great or small.
The sound of the church bell in
Nottingham, the home of his boyhood, struck to his heart; like
Milton and
Roger Williams, his soul abhorred the hireling ministry of diviners for money; and on the morning of a firstday, he was moved to go to the great steeple-house and cry against the idol.
‘When I came there,’ says
Fox, ‘the people looked like fallow ground, and the priest, like a great lump of earth, stood in the pulpit above.
He took for his text these words of Peter— “We have also a more sure word of prophecy;” and told the people, this was the Scriptures.
Now, the
Lord's power was so mighty upon me, and so strong in me, that I could not hold; but was made to cry
out, “ Oh, no!
it is not the Scriptures, it is the Spirit.”
’
The principle contained a moral revolution.
If it flattered self-love and fed enthusiasm, it also established absolute freedom of mind, trod every idolatry
[
335]
under foot, and entered the strongest protest against
the forms of a hierarchy.
It was the principle for which
Socrates died and
Plato suffered; and now that
Fox went forth to proclaim it among the people, he was every where resisted with angry vehemence, and priests and professors, magistrates and people, swelled
like the raging waves of the sea. At the
Lancaster sessions forty priests appeared against him at once.
To the ambitious Presbyterians, it seemed as if hell were broke loose; and
Fox, imprisoned and threatened with the gallows, still rebuked their bitterness as ‘exceeding rude and devilish,’ resisting and overcoming
pride with unbending stubbornness.
Possessed of vast ideas which he could not trace to their origin, a mystery to himself, like
Cromwell and so many others who have exercised vast influence on society, he believed himself the special ward of a favoring
Providence, and his doctrine the spontaneous expression of irresistible, intuitive truth.
Nothing could daunt his enthusiasm.
Cast into jail among felons, he claimed of the public tribunals a release only to continue his exertions; and as he rode about the country, the seed of God sparkled
about him like innumerable sparks of fire.
If cruelly beaten, or set in the stocks, or ridiculed as mad, he still proclaimed the oracles of the voice within him, and rapidly gained adherents among the country people.
If driven from the church, he spoke in the open air, forced from the shelter of the humble alehouse, he slept without fear under a haystack, or watched among the furze.
His fame increased; crowds gathered, like flocks of pigeons, to hear him. His frame in prayer is described as the most awful, living and reverent ever felt or seen; and his vigorous understanding, soon disciplined by clear convictions to natural dialectics, made
[
336]
him powerful in the public discussions to which he
defied the world.
A true witness, writing from knowledge, and not report, declares that, by night and by day, by sea and by land, in every emergency of the nearest and most exercising nature, he was always in his place, and always a match for every service and
occasion.
By degrees ‘the hypocrites’ feared to dispute with him; and the simplicity of his principle found such ready entrance among the people, that the priests trembled and scud as he drew near; ‘so that it was a dreadful thing to them, when it was told them, “ The man in leathern breeches is come.”
’
The converts to his doctrine were chiefly among the
yeomanry; and Quakers were compared to the butterflies that live in fells.
It is the boast of
Barclay, that the
simplicity of truth was restored by weak instruments, and
Penn exults that the message came without sus-
picion of human wisdom.
It was wonderful to witness the energy and the unity of mind and character which the strong perception of speculative truth imparted to the most illiterate mechanics; they delivered the oracles of conscience with fearless freedom and natural eloquence; and with happy and unconscious sagacity, spontaneously developed the system of moral truth, which, as they believed, existed as an incorruptible
seed in every soul.
Every human being was embraced within the sphere of their benevolence.
George Fox did not fail, by letter, to catechize Innocent XI.
Ploughmen and
milkmaids, becoming itinerant preachers, sounded the alarm throughout the world, and appealed to the consciences of Puritans and Cavaliers, of the
Pope and the
Grand Turk, of the negro and the savage.
The plans of the Quakers designed no less than the establishment
[
337]
of a universal religion; their apostles made their way to
Rome and
Jerusalem, to
New England and
Egypt; and some were even moved to go towards
China and
Japan, and in search of the unknown realms of
Prester John.
The rise of the people called Quakers is one of the memorable events in the history of man. It marks the moment when intellectual freedom was claimed unconditionally by the people as an inalienable birthright.
To the masses in that age all reflection on politics and morals presented itself under a theological form.
The
Quaker doctrine is philosophy, summoned from the cloister, the college, and the saloon, and planted among the most despised of the people.
As poetry is older than critics, so philosophy is older than metaphysicians.
The mysterious question of the purpose of our being is always before us and within us; and the little child, as it begins to prattle, makes inquiries which the pride of learning cannot solve.
The method of the solution adopted by the Quakers, was the natural consequence of the origin of their sect.
The mind of
George Fox had the highest systematic sagacity; and his doctrine, developed and rendered illustrious by
Barclay and
Penn, was distinguished by its simplicity and unity.
The
Quaker has but one word, the
Inner Light, the voice of God in the soul.
That light is a reality, and therefore in its freedom the highest revelation of truth; it is kindred with the Spirit
of God, and therefore merits dominion as the guide to virtue; it shines in every man's breast, and therefore
joins the whole human race in the unity of equal rights.
Intellectual freedom, the supremacy of mind, universal enfranchisement,—these three points include the whole of Quakerism, as far as it belongs to civil history.
Quakerism rests on the reality of the
Inner Light.
[
338]
and its method of inquiry is absolute freedom applied
to consciousness.
The revelation of truth is immediate.
It springs neither from tradition nor from the senses, but directly from the mind.
No man comes to the knowledge of God but by the Spirit.
‘Each per-
son,’ says
Penn, ‘knows God from an infallible demonstration in himself, and not on the slender
grounds of men's lo here interpretations, or lo there– The instinct of a Deity is so natural to man, that he can no more be without it, and be, than he can be without the most essential part of himself.’
As the
eye opens, light enters; and the mind, as it looks in upon itself, receives moral truth by intuition.
Others have sought wisdom by consulting the outward world, and, confounding consciousness with reflection, have trusted solely to the senses for the materials of thought; the
Quaker, placing no dependence on the world of the senses, calls the soul home from its wanderings through the mazes of tradition and the wonders of the visible universe, bidding the vagrant sit down by its own fires to read the divine inscription on the heart.
‘Some seek truth in books, some in learned men, but what they seek for is in themselves.’—‘Man is an epitome of the world, and to be learned in it, we have only to
read ourselves well.’
Thus the method of the
Quaker coincided with that of
Descartes and his disciples, who founded their system on consciousness, and made the human mind the point of departure in philosophy.
But
Descartes plunged immediately into the confusion of hypothesis, drifting to sea to be wrecked among the barren waves of ontological speculation; and even
Leibnitz, confident in his genius and learning, lost his way among the monads of creation and the preestablished
[
339]
harmonies in this best of all possible worlds; the
illiterate
Quaker adhered strictly to his method; like the timid navigators of old time, who carefully kept near the shore, he never ventured to sea except with the certain guidance of the cynosure in the heart.
He was consistent, for he set no value on learning acquired in any other way. Tradition cannot enjoin a ceremony, still less establish a doctrine; historical faith is as the old heavens that are to be wrapped up as a scroll.
The constant standard of truth and goodness, says
William Penn, is God in the conscience, and liberty of conscience is therefore the most sacred right, and the
only avenue to religion.
To restrain it is an invasion of the divine prerogative.
It robs man of the use of the
instinct of a Deity.
To take away the great charter of
freedom of conscience is to prevent the progress of society; or rather, as the beneficent course of
Providence cannot be checked, it is in men of the present generation but knotting a whipcord to lash their own posterity.
The selfishness of bigotry is the same in every age; the persecutors of to-day do not differ from those
who inflamed the people of
Athens to demand the death of
Socrates; and the
Quaker champions of freedom of mind would never shrink from its exercise, through fear of prisons or martyrdom.
But the
Quaker asked for conscience more than security against penal legislation.
He proclaimed an insurrection against every form of authority over conscience; he resisted every attempt at the slavish subjection of the understanding.
He had no reverence for the decrees of a university, a convocation, or a synod; no fear of maledictions from the Vatican.
Nor was this all. The
Quaker denied the value of all learning,
[
340]
except that which the mind appropriates by its own
intelligence.
The lessons of tradition were no better than the prating of a parrot, and letter learning may be hurtful as well as helpful.
When the mind is not free, the devil can accompany the zealot to his prayers and the doctor to his study.
The soul is a living fountain of immortal truth; but a college is in itself no better than a cistern, in which water may stagnate, and truth to him who is learned and not wise, who knows words and not things, is of no more worth than a beautiful piece of sculpture to a Vandal.
Let then the pedant plume himself in the belief, that erudition is wisdom; the waters of life, welling up from the soul, gush forth in spontaneous freedom; and the illiterate mechanic need not fear to rebuke the proudest
rabbis of the university.
The
Quaker equally claimed the emancipation of conscience from the terrors of superstition.
He did not waken devotion by appeals to fear.
He could not grow pale from dread of apparitions, or, like
Grotius,
establish his faith by the testimony of ghosts; and in an age when the
English courts punished witchcraft with death, he rejected the delusion as having no warrant in the free experience of the soul.
To him no spirit was created evil; the world began with inno-
cency; and as God blessed the works of his hands,
their natures and harmony magnified their Creator.
God made no devil; for all that he made was good, without a jar in the whole frame.
Discord proceeds from a perversion of powers, whose purpose was benevolent; and the spirit becomes evil only by a departure from truth.
The
Quaker was equally warned against the delu-
sions of self-love.
His enemies, in derision, sneered at
[
341]
his idol as a delirious will-in-the-wisp, that claimed a
heavenly descent for the offspring of earthly passions; and
Fox, and
Barclay, and
Penn, earnestly denounced ‘the idolatry which hugs its own conceptions,’ mistaking the whimseys of a feverish brain for the calm revelations of truth.
But, ‘How shall I know,’ asks
Penn, ‘that a man does not obtrude his own sense upon us as the infallible Spirit?’
And he answers, ‘By the same Spirit.’
The Spirit witnesseth to
our spirit.
The
Quaker repudiates the errors which the bigotry of sects, or the zeal of selfishness, or the delusion of the senses, has engrafted upon the unchanging principles of morals; and accepting intelligence wherever it exists, from the collision of parties and the strife in the world of opinions, he gathers together the universal truths which of necessity constitute the common creed of mankind.
There is a natural sagacity of sympathy, which separates what belongs to the individual from that which commends itself to universal reason.
Quakerism ‘is a most rational system.’
Judgment is to be made not
from the rash and partial mind, but from the eternal light that never errs.
The divine revelation is universal, and compels assent.
The jarring reasonings of individuals have filled the world with controversies and
debates; the true light pleads its excellency in every breast.
Neither may the divine revelation be confounded with individual conscience; for the conscience of the individual follows judgment, and may be warped by self-love and debauched by lust.
The
Turk has no remorse for sensual indulgence, for he has defiled his judgment with a false opinion The Papist, if he eat flesh in Lent, is reproved by the Inward monitor, for that monitor is blinded by a false belief.
[
342]
The true light is therefore not the reason of the
individual, nor the conscience of the individual; it is the light of universal reason; the voice of universal conscience, ‘manifesting its own verity, in that it is confirmed and established by the experience of all men.’
Moreover it has the characteristic of necessity.
‘It constrains even its adversaries to plead for it.’
It never contradicts sound reason,‘and is the noblest and most certain rule, for’ the divine revelation is so evident and clear of itself, that by its own evidence and clearness, it irresistibly forces the well-disposed
understanding to assent.
But would the Inner Light bend to the authority of written inspiration?
The
Bible was the religion of Protestants: had the
Quaker a better guide?
The
Quaker believed in the unity of truth; there can be no contradiction between right reason and previous revelation, between just tradition and an enlightened conscience.
But the Spirit is the criterion.
The Spirit is the guide which leads into all truth.
The
Quaker reads the Scriptures with delight, but not with idolatry.
It is his own soul which bears the valid witness that they are true.
The letter is not the
Spirit; the
Bible is not religion, but a record of religion.
‘The Scriptures’—such are
Barclay's words —‘are a declaration of the fountain, and not the fountain itself.’
Far from rejecting Christianity, the
Quaker insisted that he alone maintained its primitive simplicity.
The skeptic forever vibrated between opinions; the
Quaker was fixed even to dogmatism.
The infidel rejected religion; the
Quaker cherished it as his life.
The scoffer pushed freedom to dissoluteness; the
Quaker circumscribed freedom by obedience to truth.
[
343]
George Fox and
Voltaire both protested against priest-
craft;
Voltaire in behalf of the senses,
Fox in behalf of the soul.
To the
Quakers Christianity is freedom.
And they loved to remember, that the patriarchs were graziers, that the prophets were mechanics and shepherds, that
John Baptist, the greatest of envoys, was clad in a rough garment of camel's hair.
To them there was joy in the thought, that the brightest image of divinity on earth had been born in a manger, had been reared under the roof of a carpenter, had been content for himself and his guests with no greater luxury than barley loaves and fishes, and that the messengers of his choice had been rustics like themselves.
Not were they embarrassed by knotty points of theology.
Their creed did not vary with the subtilties of verbal criticism; they revered the eternity of the
Inner Light without regard to the arguments of grammarians or the use of the Greek article.
Did philosophers and divines involve themselves in the mazes of liberty and fixed decrees, of foreknowledge and fate, the monitor in the
Quaker's breast was to him the sufficient guaranty of freedom.
Did men defend or reject the
Trinity by learned dissertations and minute criticisms on various readings, he avoided the use of the word, and despised the jargon of disputants; but the idea of God with us, the incarnation of the Spirit, the union of Deity with humanity, was to the
Quaker the dearest and the most sublime symbol of man's enfranchisement.
As a consequence of this faith, every avenue to truth was to be kept open.
‘
Christ came not to extinguish,
but to improve the heathen knowledge.’
‘The difference between the philosophers of
Greece and the
Christian Quaker is rather in manifestation than in
nature.’
He cries Stand, to every thought that
[
344]
knocks for entrance; but welcomes it as a friend, if it
Chap. XVI.} Penn, i. 326. |
gives the watchword.
Exulting in the wonderful bond which admitted him to a communion with all the sons of light, of every nation and age, he rejected with scorn the school of
Epicurus; he had no sympathy with the follies of the skeptics, and esteemed even the mind of Aris-
totle too much bent upon the outward world.
But Aristotle himself, in so far as he grounds philosophy on virtue and self-denial, and every contemplative sage, orators and philosophers, statesmen and divines, were gathered as a cloud of witnesses to the same unchanging truth.
‘The Inner Light,’ said
Penn, ‘is the Domestic God of
Pythagoras.’
The voice in the breast of
George Fox, as he kept sheep on the hills of
Nottingham, was the spirit which had been the good genius and guide of
Socrates.
Above all, the
Christian Quaker delighted
in ‘the divinely contemplative
Plato,’ the ‘famous doctor of gentile theology,’ and recognized the unity of the
Inner Light with the divine principle which dwelt with
Plotinus.
Quakerism is as old as hu-
manity.
The Inner Light is to the
Quaker not only the revelation of truth, but the guide of life and the oracle of duty.
He demands the uniform predominance of the world of thought over the world of sensation.
The blameless enthusiast, well aware of the narrow powers and natural infirmities of man, yet aims at perfection from sin; and tolerating no compromise,
demands the harmonious development of man's higher powers with the entire subjection of the base to the nobler instincts.
The motives to conduct and its rule are, like truth, to be sought in the soul.
Thus the doctrine of disinterested virtue—the doctrine for which
Guyon was persecuted and
Fenelon
[
345]
disgraced—the doctrine which tyrants condemn as
rebellion, and priests as heresy, was cherished by the
Quaker as the foundation of morality.
Self-denial he enforced with ascetic severity, yet never with ascetic superstition.
He might array himself fantastically to express a truth by an apparent symbol, but he never wore sackcloth as an anchorite.
‘Thoughts of death and hell to keep out sin were to him no better than fig-
leaves.’
He would obey the imperative dictate of truth, even though the fires of hell were quenched.
Virtue is happiness; heaven is with her always.
The
Quakers knew no superstitious vows of celibacy; they favored no nunneries, monasteries, ‘or religious bedlams;’ but they demanded purity of life as essential to the welfare of society, and founded the institution of marriage on permanent affection, not on transient passion.
Their matches, they were wont to say, are registered in heaven.
Has a recent school of philosophy discovered in wars and pestilence, in vices and poverty, salutary checks on population?
The
Quaker, confident of the supremacy of mind, feared no evil, though plagues and war should cease, and vice and poverty be banished by intelligent culture.
Despotism favors the liberty of the senses; and popular freedom rests on sanctity of morals.
To the
Quaker, licentiousness is the greatest bane of good order and good government.
The
Quaker revered principles, not men, truth, not power, and therefore could not become the tool of ambition.
‘They are a people,’ said
Cromwell, ‘whom I
cannot win with gifts, honors, offices, or places.’
Still less was the
Quaker a slave to avarice.
Seeking wisdom, and not the philosopher's stone, to him the love
of money for money's sake was the basest of passions,
and the rage of indefinite accumulation was ‘oppression
[
346]
to the poor, compelling those who have little to drudge
like slaves.’‘That the sweat and tedious labor of the husbandmen, early and late, cold and hot, wet and dry, should be converted into the pleasure, ease and pastime of a small number of men, that the cart, the plough, the thresh, should be in inordinate severity laid upon nineteen parts of the land to feed the appetites of the twentieth, is far from the appointment of the great
Governor of the world.’
It is best, the people be neither rich nor poor; for riches bring luxury, and luxury
Ibid. i. 520 Ibid.
i. 522 |
tyranny.
The supremacy of mind, forbidding the exercise of tyranny as a means of government, attempted a reformation of society, but only by means addressed to conscience.
The system contained a reform in education, it demanded that children should be brought up, not in the pride of caste; still less by methods of violence; but as men, by methods suited to the intelligence of humanity.
Life should never be taken for an offence against property; nor the person imprisoned for debt.
And the same train of reasoning led to a protest against war. The
Quaker believed in the power of justice to protect itself; for himself, he renounced the use of the sword; and, aware that the vices of society might entail danger on a nation not imbued with his principles, he did not absolutely deny to others the right of defence, but looked forward with hope to the period when the progress of civilization should realize the
vision of a universal and enduring peace.
The supremacy of mind abrogated ceremonies; the
Quaker regarded ‘the substance of things,’ and broke
up forms as the nests of superstition.
Every Protestant refused the rosary and the censer; the
Quaker rejects common prayer, and his adoration of God is the free
[
347]
language of his soul.
He remembers the sufferings of
divine philanthropy, but uses neither wafer nor cup. He trains up his children to fear God, but never sprinkles them with baptismal water.
He ceases from labor on the first day of the week, for the ease of creation, and not from reverence for a holiday.
The
Quaker is a pilgrim on earth, and life is but the ship that bears
him to the haven; he mourns in his mind for the departure of friends by respecting their advice, taking care of their children, and loving those that they loved; and this seems better than outward emblems of sorrowing.
His words are always freighted with inno-
cence and truth; God, the searcher of hearts, is the
witness to his sincerity; but kissing a book or lifting a hand is a superstitious vanity, and the sense of duty cannot be increased by an imprecation.
The
Quaker distrusts the fine arts; they are so easily perverted to the purposes of superstition and the delight of the senses.
Yet, when they are allied with virtue, and express the nobler sentiments, they are very
sweet and refreshing.
The comedy, where, of old,
Aristophanes excited the Athenians to hate
Socrates, and where the profligate gallants of the court of Charles II.
assembled to hear the drollery of
Nell Gwyn heap ridicule on the Quakers, was condemned without mercy.
But the innocent diversions of society, the delights of rural life, the pursuits of science, the study of history, would not interfere with aspirations after God.
For apparel, the
Quaker dresses soberly, according to his condition and education; far from prescribing an unchanging fashion, he holds it ‘no vanity to use what the country naturally produces,’ and reproves nothing but that extravagance which ‘all sober men of all
sorts readily grant to be evil.’
[
348]
Like vanities of dress, the artifices of rhetoric were
despised.
Truth, it was said, is beautiful enough in plain clothes; and
Penn, who was able to write exceedingly well, too often forgot that style is the gossamer on which the seeds of truth float through the world.
Careless of style, the Quakers employ for the propagation of truth no weapons but those of mind.
They distributed tracts; but they would not sustain their doctrine by a hireling ministry.
‘A man thou hast corrupted to thy interests will never be faithful to them;’ and an established church seemed ‘a cage for
unclean birds.’
When a great high-priest, who was a doctor, had finished preaching from the words ‘Ho every one that thirsteth, come buy without money,’
George Fox ‘was moved of the
Lord to say to him, “Come down, thou deceiver!
Dost thou bid people come to the waters of life freely, and yet thou takest three hundred pounds a year of them?”
The Spirit is a free teacher.’
Still less would the
Quaker employ the methods of persecution.
He was a zealous Protestant, but in the season of highest excitement, he pleaded for absolute liberty of worship, and sought to enfranchise the
Roman Catholic himself.
To persecute, he esteemed a confession of a bad cause; for the design that is of God has confidence in itself, and knows that any other
will vanish.
‘Your cruelties are a confirmation, that truth is not on your side,’ was the remonstrance of a woman of
Aberdeen to the magistrates who had im-
prisoned her husband.
In like manner, the
Quaker never employed force to effect a social revolution or reform, but, refusing obedience to wrong, deprived tyranny of its instruments
[
349]
The
Quaker's loyalty, said the earl of Arrol at
Aberdeen,
is a qualified loyalty; it smells of rebellion: to which Alexander Skein, brother to a subsequent governor of
West New Jersey, calmly answered, ‘I understand not loyalty, that is not qualified with the fear of God rather than of man.’
The
Quaker never would pay
tithes; never yielded to any human law which traversed his conscience.
He did more: he resisted tyranny with all the moral energy of enthusiasm, bearing witness against blind obedience not less than
against will worship.
Believing in the supremacy of mind over matter, he sought no control over the government except by intelligence; and therefore he needed to hold the right of free discussion inviolably sacred.
He never consented to the slightest compromise of this freedom.
Wherever there was evil and oppression, the
Quaker claimed the right to be present with a remonstrance.
He delivered his opinions freely before
Cromwell and Charles II., in face of the gallows in
New England, in the streets of
London, before the
English commons.
The heaviest penalties, that bigotry could devise, never induced him to swerve a hair's breadth from his purpose of speaking freely and
publicly.
This was his method of resisting tyranny.
Algernon Sydney, who took money from Louis XIV., like
Brutus, would have plunged a dagger into the breast of a tyrant; the
Quaker, without a bribe, resisted tyranny by appeals to the monitor in the tyrant's breast, and he labored incessantly to advance reform by enlightening the public conscience.
Any other method of revolution he believed an impossibility.
Government—such was his belief—will always be as the people are; and a people imbued with the love of liberty, create the irresistible necessity of a free government.
[
350]
He sought no revolution, but that which
followed as the consequence of the public intelligence.
Such revolutions were inevitable.
‘Though men consider it not, the
Lord rules and overrules in the kingdoms of men.’
Any other revolution would be
transient.
The
Quakers submitted to the restoration of Charles II., as the best arrangement for the crisis; confident that time and truth would lead to a happier issue.
‘The best frame, in ill hands, can do nothing that is great and good.
Governments, like clocks, go from the motion imparted to them; they depend on men, rather than men on government.
Let men be good, the government cannot be bad; if it be
ill, they will cure it.’
Even with absolute power, an Antonine or an Alfred could not make bricks without straw, nor the sword do more than substitute one tyran-
ny for another.
The moral power of ideas is constantly effecting changes and improvement in society.
No
Quaker book has a trace of skepticism on man's capacity for progress.
Such is the force of an honest profession of truth, the humblest person, if single-minded and firm, ‘can shake all the country for ten miles round.’
The integrity of the
Inner Light is an invincible power.
It is a
power which never changes; such was the message of
Fox to the pope, the kings, and nobles of all sorts: it fathoms the world, and throws down that which is contrary to it. It quenches fire; it daunts wild beasts;
it turns aside the edge of the sword; it outfaces instruments of cruelty; it converts executioners.
It was remembered with exultation, that the enfranchisements of Christianity were the result of faith, and not of the sword; and that truth in its simplicity, radiating from the foot of the cross, has filled a world of sensualists
[
351]
with astonishment, overthrown their altars, discredit-
ed their oracles, infused itself into the soul of the multitude, invaded the court, risen superior to armies, and led magistrates and priests, statesmen and generals, in its train, as the trophies of its strength exerted
its freedom.
thus the
Quaker was cheered by a firm belief in the progress of society.
Even Aristotle, so many centuries ago, recognized the upward tendency in human affairs; a Jewish contemporary of
Barclay declared that progress to be a tendency towards popular power;
George Fox perceived that the
Lord's hand was against kings; and one day, on the hills of
Yorkshire, he had a vision, that he was but beginning the glorious work of God in the earth; that his followers would in time become as numerous as motes in the sunbeams; and that the party of humanity would gather the whole human race
in one sheepfold.
Neither art, wisdom, nor violence, said
Barclay, conscious of the vitality of truth, shall
quench the little spark that hath appeared.
The atheist—such was the common opinion of the Quakers—the atheist alone denies progress, and says in his heart,
All things continue as they were in the beginning.
If, from the rules of private morality, we turn to political institutions, here also the principle of the
Quaker is the
Inner Light.
He acquiesces in any established government which shall build its laws
upon the declarations of ‘universal reason.’
But government is a part of his religion; and the religion
that declares ‘every man enlightened by the divine light,’ establishes government on universal and equal enfranchisement.
‘Not one of mankind,’ says
Penn, ‘is exempted from this illumination.’—‘God discovers himself to
[
352]
every man.’
He is in every breast, in the ignorant
Chap. XVI.} Penn, i. 323. |
drudge as well as in
Locke or
Leibnitz.
Every moral truth exists in every man's and woman's heart, as an incorruptible seed; the ground may be barren, but the
seed is certainly there.
Every man is a little sovereign to himself.
Freedom is as old as reason itself, which
is given to all, constant and eternal, the same to all nations.
The
Quaker is no materialist; truth and
conscience are not in the laws of countries; they are
Penn, i. 221.
Ibid. II. 294. |
not one thing at
Rome, and another at
Athens; they cannot be abrogated by senate or people.
Freedom
and the right of property were in the world before Protestantism; they came not with Luther; they do not vanish with Calvin; they are the common privilege of mankind.
The
Bible enfranchises those only to whom it is carried; Christianity, those only to whom it is made known; the creed of a sect, those only within its narrow pale.
The
Quaker, resting his system on the
Inner Light, redeems the race.
Of those who believe in the necessity of faith in an outward religion, some have cherished the mild superstition, that, in the hour of dissolution, an angel is sent from heaven ‘to manifest the
doctrine of
Christ's passion ;’ the
Quaker believes that the heavenly messenger is always present in the breast of every man, ready to counsel the willing listener.
Man is equal to his fellow-man.
No class can, ‘by long apprenticeship’ or a prelate's breath, by wearing black or shaving the crown, obtain a monopoly of moral
truth.
There is no distinction of clergy and laity.
The Inner Light sheds its blessings on the whole human race; it knows no distinction of sex. It redeems woman by the dignity of her moral nature, and claims for her the equal culture and free exercise of her
[
353]
endowments.
As the human race ascends the steep ac-
civity of improvement, the
Quaker cherishes woman as the equal companion of the journey.
Men are equal.
The
Quaker knows no abiding distinction of king and subject.
The universality of the
Inner Light ‘brings crowns to the dust, and lays
them low and level with the earth.’
‘The
Lord will be king; there will be no crowns but to such as obey his will.’
With God a thousand years are indeed as one day; yet judgment on tyrants will come at last,
and may come ere long.
Every man has God in the conscience; the
Quaker knows no distinction of castes.
He bows to God, and not to his fellow-servant.
‘All men are alike by creation,’ says
Barclay; and it is slavish fear which
reverences others as gods.
‘I am a man,’ says every
Quaker, and refuses homage.
The most favored of his race, even though endowed with the gifts and glo-
ries of an angel, he would regard but as his fellow servant and his brother.
The feudal nobility still nourished its pride.
‘Nothing,’ says
Penn, ‘noth-
ing of man's folly has less show of reason to palliate it.’
‘What a pother has this noble blood made in the world!’
‘But men of blood have no marks of honor stampt upon them by nature.’
The
Quaker scorned to take off his hat to any of them; he held himself the peer of the proudest peer in Christendom.
With the
Eastern despotism of Diocletian,
Europe had learned the hyperboles of Eastern adulation; but ‘My Lord Peter and My Lord Paul are not to be found in the
Bible; My Lord Solon or Lord Scipio is not to be read in
Greek or Latin stories.’
And the
Quaker returned to the simplicity of Gracchus and
Demosthenes, though ‘Thee and Thou proved a sore cut to
[
354]
proud flesh.’
This was not done for want of courtesy
which ‘no religion destroys;’ but he knew that the hat was the symbol of enfranchisement, worn before the king by the peers of the realm, in token of equality; and the symbol, as adopted by the
Quaker, was a constant proclamation that all men are equal.
Thus the doctrine of
George Fox was not only a plebeian form of philosophy, but also the prophecy of political changes.
The spirit that made to him the revelation was the invisible spirit of the age, rendered wise by tradition, and excited to insurrection by the enthusiasm of liberty and religion.
Every where in
Europe, therefore, the Quakers were exposed to persecution.
Their seriousness was called melancholy fanaticism; their boldness, self-will; their frugality, covetousness; their freedom, infidelity; their conscience, rebellion.
In
England, the general laws against dissenters, the statute against Papists, and special statutes against themselves, put them at the mercy of every malignant informer.
They were hated by the church and the Presbyterians, by the peers and the king.
The codes of that day describe them as ‘an abominable sect;’ ‘their principles as inconsistent with any kind of government.’
During the Long Parliament, in the time of the protectorate, at the restoration, in
England, in
New England, in the
Dutch colony of New Netherlands, every where, and for wearisome years, they were exposed to perpetual dangers and griefs; they were whipped, crowded into jails among felons, kept in dungeons foul and gloomy beyond imagination, fined, exiled, sold into colonial bondage.
They bore the brunt of the persecution of the dissenters.
Imprisoned in winter without fire, they perished from frost.
Some were victims to the
barbarous cruelty of the jailer.
Twice George F<*>
[
355]
narrowly escaped death.
The despised people braved
every danger to continue their assemblies.
Haled out by violence, they returned.
When their meeting-houses 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.
Is it strange that they looked beyond the
Atlantic 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
months after the return of
George Fox from his pilgrimage 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,
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
[
356]
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 of the bargain.
And now that the men who had gone
about to turn the world upside down, were possessed 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 people.’
And on the third day of March, 1677, the
charter, or fundamental laws, of
West New Jersey 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.
[
357]
No man, nor number of men, hath power over con-
Chap XVI.} 1677 Smith, 528-539 |
science.
No person shall at any time, in any ways, or on any pretence, be called in question, or in the least 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
[
358]
the men of peace, arrived in
America,
Andros, the
governor of New York, claimed jurisdiction over their 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.
1 The Indian kings also gathered in council under the shades of the Burlington forests, and declared their joy at the pros-
pect 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
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.
An express grant of the powers of government 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 possession
[359]
of their civil rights and freedoms, a mere wilder- ness would be no encouragement.
It were madness to leave a free country to plant a wilderness, and give 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
[
360]
grant from the duke of
York had reserved no profit or
Chap. XVI.} 1680. Aug. 6. |
jurisdiction, the tax was illegal.
The duke of
York promptly acquiesced in the decision, and in a new indenture relinquished every claim to the territory and the government.
After such trials, vicissitudes, and success, the light of peace dawned upon
West New Jersey; and in November, 1681,
Jennings, acting as governor for the proprietaries, convened the first legislative assembly of the representatives of men who said
thee and
thou to all the world, and wore their hats in presence of beggar or king.
Their first measures established their rights by an act of fundamental legislation, and in the spirit of ‘the Concessions,’ they framed their government on the basis of humanity.
Neither faith, nor wealth, nor race, was respected.
They met in the wilderness as men, and founded society on equal rights.
What shall we relate of a community thus organized?
That they multiplied, and were happy?
that they levied for the expenses of their commonwealth two hundred pounds, to be paid in corn, or skins, or money?
that they voted the governor a salary of twenty pounds? that they prohibited the sale of ardent spirits to the Indians?
that they forbade imprisonment for debt?
The formation of this little government of a few hundred souls, that soon increased to thousands, is one of the most beautiful incidents in the history of the age.
West New Jersey had been a fit home for
Fenelon.
The people rejoiced under the reign of God, confident that he would beautify the meek with salvation.
A loving correspondence began with Friends in
England; and from the fathers of the sect, frequent messages were received.
‘Friends that are gone to make plantations
in
America, keep the plantations in your hearts, that
[
361]
your own vines and lilies be not hurt.
You that are
governors and judges, you should be eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, and fathers to the poor; that you may gain the blessing of those who are ready to perish, and cause the widow's heart to sing for gladness.
If you rejoice because your hand hath gotten much; if you say to fine gold, Thou art my confidence,—you will have denied the God that is above.
The
Lord is ruler among nations; he will crown his people with dominion.’
3
In the midst of this innocent tranquillity, Byllinge, the original grantee of
Berkeley, claimed as proprietary the right of nominating the deputy-governor.
The usurpation was resisted.
Byllinge grew importunate; and the Quakers, setting a new precedent, amended their constitutions, according to the prescribed method, and then elected a governor.
Every thing went well in
West New Jersey; this method of reform was the advice of William
Penn.
For in the mean time
William Penn had become
deeply interested in the progress of civilization on the
Delaware.
In company with eleven others, he had purchased
East New Jersey of the heirs of
Carteret.
But of the eastern moiety of
New Jersey, peopled chiefly by Puritans, the history is intimately connected with that of New York.
The line that divides
East and
West New Jersey, is the line where the influence of the humane society of Friends is merged in that of Puritanism.
It was for the grant of a territory on the opposite bank
of the
Delaware, that
William Penn, in June, 1680 became a suitor.
4 His father, distinguished in
English
[
362]
history by the conquest of
Jamaica, and by his con-
duct, discretion, and courage, in the signal battle against the
Dutch in 1665, had bequeathed to him a claim on the government for sixteen thousand pounds.
Massachusetts had bought
Maine for a little more than one thousand pounds; then, and long afterwards, colonial property was lightly esteemed; and to the prodigal Charles II., always embarrassed for money, the grant of a province seemed the easiest mode of cancelling the debt.
William Penn had powerful friends in North,
Halifax, and
Sunderland;
5 and a pledge given to his father on his death-bed, obtained for him the assured favor of the duke of
York.
Sustained by such friends, and pursuing his object with enthusiasm,
William Penn triumphed over ‘the great opposition’
6 which he encountered, and obtained a charter for the territory, which received from Charles II.
the name of
Pennsylvania, and which was to include three degrees of latitude by five degrees of longitude west from the
Delaware.
The duke of
York desired to retain the three lower counties, that is, the
state of Delaware, as an appendage to New York;
Pennsylvania was, therefore, in that direction, limited by a circle drawn at twelve miles' distance from
Newcastle, northward and westward, unto the beginning of the fortieth degree of latitude.
This impossible boundary received the assent of the agents of the duke of
York and Lord Baltimore.
The charter, as originally drawn up by
William Penn himself, conceded powers of government analogous to those of the charter for
Maryland.
That no
[
363]
clause might be at variance with English law, it was
revised by the
attorney-general, and amended by Lord North, who inserted clauses to guard the sovereignty of the king and the commercial supremacy of parliament.
The acts of the future colonial legislature were to be submitted to the king and council, who had power to annul them if contrary to English law. The power of levying customs was expressly reserved to parliament.
The bishop of
London, quite unnecessarily, claimed security for the English church.
The people of the country were to be safe against taxation, except by the provincial assembly or the English parliament.
In other respects the usual franchises of a feudal proprietary were conceded.
At length, writes
William Penn, ‘After many wait-
ings, watchings, solicitings, and disputes in council, my country was confirmed to me under the great seal of
England.
God will bless and make it the seed of a nation.
I shall have a tender care of the government, that it be well laid at first.’
Pennsylvania included the principal settlements of the Swedes; and patents for land had been made to
Dutch and English by the Dutch West India Company, and afterwards by the duke of
York.
The royal proclamation soon announced to all the inhabitants of
the province, that
William Penn, their absolute proprietary, was invested with all powers and preeminences necessary for the government.
The proprietary also issued his proclamation to his vassals and subjects.
It was in the following words:—
my Friends: I wish you all happiness here and hereafter.
These are to lett you know, that it hath pleased God in his
Providence to cast you within my
Lott and Care.
It is a business, that though I never
[
364]
undertook before, yet God has given me an under-
standing of my duty and an honest minde to doe it uprightly.
I hope you will not be troubled at your chainge and the king's choice; for you are now fixt, at the mercy of no
Governour that comes to make his fortune great.
You shall be governed by laws of your own makeing, and live a free, and if you will, a sober and industreous People.
I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress his person.
God has furnisht me with a better resolution, and has given me his grace to keep it. In short, whatever sober and free men can reasonably desire for the security and improvement of their own happiness, I shall heartily comply with—I beseech God to direct you in the way of righteousness, and therein prosper you and your children after you. I am
Your true Friend,
Such were the pledges of the
Quaker sovereign on assuming the government; it is the duty of history to state, that, during his long reign, these pledges were redeemed.
He never refused the free men of
Pennsylvania a reasonable desire.
With this letter to the inhabitants, young
Markham immediately
8 sailed as agent of the proprietary.
He was to govern in harmony with law, and the people were requested to continue the established system of revenue till
Penn himself could reach
America.
During the summer, the conditions for the sale of lands were
reciprocally ratified by
Penn and a company of adventurers.
The enterprise of planting a province had been vast for a man of large fortunes;
Penn's whole
[
365]
estate had yielded, when unencumbered, a revenue of
fifteen hundred pounds; but in his zeal to rescue his suffering brethren from persecution, he had, by heavy expenses in courts of law and at court, impaired his resources, which he might hope to retrieve from the sale of domains.
Would he sacrifice his duty as a man to his emoluments as a sovereign?
In August, a company of traders offered six thousand pounds and an annual revenue for a monopoly of the
Indian traffic between the
Delaware and the
Susquehannah.
To a father of a family, in straitened circumstances, the temptation was great; but
Penn was hound, by his religion, to equal laws, and he rebuked the cupidity of monopoly.
‘I will not abuse the love of God,’—such was his decision,—‘nor act unworthy of his
Providence, by defiling what came to me clean.
No; let the
Lord guide me by his wisdom, to honor his name and serve his truth and people, that an example and a standard may be set up to the nations;’ and he adds to a Friend, ‘There may be room there, though not here, for the
Holy Experiment.’
9
With a company of emigrants, full instructions were
forwarded respecting lands and planting a city.
Penn disliked the crowded towns of the old world; he desired the city might be so planted with gardens round each house, as to form ‘a greene country town.’
10 And almost at the same time he addressed a letter to the native children of the
American forest, declaring
himself and them responsible to one and the same God, having the same law written in their hearts, and alike bound to love, and help, and do good to one another.
11
Meantime, the mind of
Penn was deeply agitated by thoughts on the government which he should establish.
[
366]
To him government was a part of religion itself,
an emanation of divine power, capable of kindness, goodness, and charity; having an opportunity of benevolent care for men of the highest attainments, even more than the office of correcting evil-doers; and, without imposing one uniform model on all the world, without denying that time, place, and emergencies may bring with them a necessity or an excuse for monarchical, or even aristocratical institutions, he believed ‘any government to be free to the people, where the laws rule, and the people are a party to the laws.’
That
Penn was superior to avarice, was clear from his lavish expenditures to relieve the imprisoned; that he had risen above ambition, appeared from his preference of the despised
Quakers to the career of high advancement in the court of Charles II.
But he loved to do good; and could passionate philanthropy resign absolute power, apparently so favorable to the exercise of vast benevolence?
Here, and here only,
Penn's spirit was severely tried;
12 but he resisted the temptation.
‘I purpose,’—such was his prompt decision—‘for the
matters of liberty I purpose, that which is extraordinary—to leave myself and successors no power of doeing mischief; that the will of one man may not hinder the good of a whole country.’
13—‘It is the great end of government to support power in reverence with the people, and to secure the people from the abuse of power; for liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without liberty is slavery.’
Taking counsel, therefore, from all sides, listening to the theories of
Algernon Sydney, whose Roman pride was ever
[
367]
faithful to the good old republican cause, and deriving
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 system
14 to be referred to the freemen in
Pennsylvania
About the same time, a free society of traders was
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.’
15
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,
the lower province was granted by two deeds of feoffment.
16 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
[
368]
of his family.
His wife, who was the love of his youth
he reminded of his impoverishment in consequence of his public spirit, and recommended economy; ‘Live low and sparingly till my debts be paid.’
Yet for his children he adds, ‘Let their learning be liberal; spare no cost, for by such parsimony all is lost that is saved’ Agriculture he proposed as their employment.
‘Let my children be husbandmen and housewives.’— Friends in
England watched his departure with anxious hope; on him rested the expectations of their society, and their farewell at parting was given with ‘the innocence and tenderness of the child that has no guile.’
After a long passage, rendered gloomy by frequent death among the passengers, many of whom had in
England been his immediate neighbors, on the twenty-seventh day
17 of October, 1682,
William Penn landed at
Newcastle.
The son and grandson of naval officers, his thoughts had from boyhood been directed to the ocean; the conquest of
Jamaica by his father early familiarized his imagination with the New World, and in
Oxford, at the age of seventeen, he indulged in visions of happiness, of which
America was the scene.
18 Bred in the school of Independency, he had, while hardly twelve years old, learned to listen to the voice of God in his soul; and at
Oxford, where his excellent genius received the benefits of learning, the words of a Quaker preacher so touched his heart, that he was fined and afterwards
expelled for nonconformity.
19 His father, bent on subduing
[
369]
his enthusiasm, beat him and turned him into
the streets, to choose between poverty with a pure conscience, or fortune with obedience.
But how could the hot anger of a petulant sailor continue against an only son?
It was in the days of the glory of
Descartes, that, to complete his education,
William Penn received a father's permission to visit the continent.
From the excitements and the instruction of travel, for which the passion is sometimes stronger than love or ambition, the young exile turned aside to the college
at
Saumur, where, under the guidance of the gifted and benevolent Amyrault, his mind was trained in the severities of Calvinism, as tempered by the spirit of universal love.
20
In the next year,
Penn, having crossed the
Alps, was just entering on the magnificence of
Piedmont, when
the appointment of his father to the command of a British squadron, in the naval war with
Holland, compelled his return to the care of the estates of the family.
The discipline of society and travel had given him grace of manners, enhanced by the severe but unpretending purity of his morals; and in
London the travelled student of Lincoln's Inn, if diligent in gaining a
knowledge of English law, was yet esteemed a most modish fine gentleman.
21 In
France, the science of the Huguenots had nourished reflection; in
London, every sentiment of sympathy was excited by the horrors which he witnessed during the devastations of the plague.
22
Having thus perfected his understanding by the
learning of
Oxford, the religion and philosophy of the
French Huguenots and
France, and the study of the laws of
England, in the bloom of youth, being of engaging
[
370]
manners, and so skilled in the use of the sword,
that he easily disarmed an antagonist,
23 of great natural vivacity, and gay good humor, the career of wealth and preferment opened before him through the influence of his father and the ready favor of his sovereign.
But his mind was already imbued with ‘a deep sense of the vanity of the world, and the irreligiousness of its religions.’
24
At length, in 1666, on a journey in
Ireland, William
Penn heard his old friend
Thomas Loe speak of the faith that overcomes the world; the undying fires of enthusiasm at once blazed up within him, and he renounced every hope for the path of integrity.
It is a path into which, says
Penn, ‘God, in his everlasting kindness, guided my feet in the flower of my youth, when about two-and-twenty years of age.’
And in the autumn of that year, he was in jail for the crime of listening to the voice of conscience.
‘Religion’— such was his remonstrance to the viceroy of
Ireland— ‘is my crime and my innocence; it makes me a prisoner to malice, but my own freeman.’
After his enlargement, returning to
England, he en-
countered bitter mockings and scornings, the invectives of the priests, the strangeness of all his old companions;
25 it was noised about, in the fashionable world, as an excellent jest, that ‘
William Penn was a Quaker again, or some very melancholy thing;;’
26 and his father, in anger, turned him penniless out of doors.
The outcast, saved from extreme indigence by a mother's fondness, became an author, and announced
to princes, priests, and people, that he was one of the despised, afflicted and forsaken Quakers; and repair-
[
371]
ing to court with his hat on, he sought to engage the
duke of
Buckingham in favor of liberty of conscience, claimed from those in authority better quarters for dissenters than stocks, and whips, and dungeons, and banishments, and was urging the cause of freedom with importunity, when he himself, in the heyday of youth, was consigned to a long and close imprisonment in the tower.
27 His offence was heresy: the bishop of
London menaced him with imprisonment for life unless he would recant.
‘My prison shall be my grave,’ an-
swered
Penn.
The kind-hearted Charles II.
sent the humane and candid Stilling fleet to calm the young enthusiast.
‘The tower’—such was
Penn's message to the king—‘is to me the worst argument in the world.’
In vain did Stilling fleet urge the motive of royal favor and preferment; the inflexible young man demanded freedom of
Arlington, ‘as the natural privilege of an Englishman.’
Club-law, he argued with the minister, may make hypocrites; it never can make converts.
Conscience needs no mark of public allowance.
It is not like a bale of goods that is to be forfeited unless it has the stamp of the custom-house.
After losing his freedom for about nine months, his prison door was opened by the intercession of his father's friend, the duke of
York; for his constancy had commanded the respect and recovered the favor of his father.
The
Quakers, exposed to judicial tyranny, were led, by the sentiment of humanity, to find a barrier against their oppressors by narrowing the application of the common law, and restricting the right of judgment to the jury.
Scarcely had
Penn been at liberty a year, when, after the intense intolerance of ‘the conventicle act,’ he was arraigned for having spoken at a Quaker
[
372]
meeting. ‘Not all the powers on earth shall divert
us from meeting to adore our God who made us.’
Thus did the young man of five-and-twenty defy the
English legislature; and he demanded on what law the indictment was founded.—‘On the common law,’ answered the recorder.
‘Where is that law?’
demanded
Penn.
‘The law which is not in being, far from being common, is no law at all.’
Amidst angry exclamations and menaces, he proceeded to plead earnestly for the fundamental laws of
England, and, as he was hurried out of court, still reminded the jury, that ‘they were his judges.’—Dissatisfied with the first verdict returned, the recorder heaped upon the jury every opprobrious epithet.
‘We will have a verdict, by the help of God, or you shall starve for it.’— ‘You are Englishmen,’ said
Penn, who had been again brought to the bar; ‘mind your privilege, give not away your right.’—‘It never will be well with us,’ said the recorder, ‘till something like the
Spanish inquisition be in
England.’
At last the jury, who had received no refreshments for two days and two nights, on the third day, gave their verdict, ‘Not Guilty.’
The recorder fined them forty marks apiece for their
independence, and, amercing
Penn for contempt of court, sent him back to prison.
The trial was an era in judicial history.
The fines were soon afterwards discharged by his father, who was now approaching his end. ‘Son William,’ said the dying admiral, ‘if you and your friends keep to your plain way of preaching and living, you will make an end of the priests.’
Inheriting a large fortune, he continued to defend publicly, from the press, the principles of intellectual liberty and moral equality; he remonstrated in unmeasured terms against the bigotry and intolerance,
[
373]
‘the hellish darkness and debauchery,’ of the univer-
sity of
Oxford; he exposed the errors of the
Roman Catholic church, and in the same breath pleaded for a toleration of their worship; and never fearing openly to address a Quaker meeting, he was soon on the road to Newgate, to suffer for his honesty by a six months
imprisonment. ‘You are an ingenious gentleman,’ said the magistrate at the trial; ‘you have a plentiful estate; why should you render yourself unhappy by associating with such a simple people?’—‘I prefer,’ said
Penn, ‘the honestly simple to the ingeniously wicked.’
The magistrate rejoined by charging
Penn with previous immoralities.
The young man, with passionate vehemence, vindicated the spotlessness of his life.
‘I speak this,’ he adds, ‘to God's glory, who has ever preserved me from the power of these pollutions, and who, from a child, begot a hatred in me towards them.’
‘Thy words shall be thy burden; I trample thy slander as dirt under my feet.’
From
Newgate Penn addressed parliament and the nation in the noblest plea for liberty of conscience—a liberty which he defended by arguments drawn from experience, from religion, and from reason.
If the efforts of the Quakers cannot obtain ‘the olive branch of toleration, we bless the providence of God, resolving by patience to out weary persecution, and by our constant sufferings to obtain a victory more glorious than our adversaries can achieve by their cruelties.’
On his release from imprisonment, a calmer season
followed.
Penn travelled in
Holland and
Germany; then returning to
England, he married a woman of extraordinary beauty and sweetness of temper, whose noble spirit ‘chose him before many suitors,’ and honored him with ‘a deep and upright love.’
As
[
374]
persecution in
England was suspended, he enjoyed for
two years the delights of rural life, and the animating pursuit of letters; till the storm was renewed, and the imprisonment of
George Fox, on his return from
America, demanded intercession.
What need of narrating the severities, which, like a slow poison, brought the prisoner to the borders of the grave?
Why enumerate the atrocities of petty tyrants, invested with village magistracies, the ferocious passions of irresponsible jailers?
The Statute Book of
England contains the clearest impress of the bigotry which a national church could foster, and a parliament avow; and
Penn, in considering
England's present interest, far from resting his appeal on the sentiment of mercy, merited the highest honors of a statesman by the profound sagacity and unbiased judgment with which he unfolded the question of the rights of conscience in its connection with the peace and happiness of the state.
It was this love of freedom of conscience which gave interest to his exertions for
New Jersey.
The
summer and
autumn after the first considerable
Quaker emigration to the eastern bank of the
Delaware,
George Fox, and
William Penn, and
Robert Barclay, with others, embarked for
Holland, to evangelize the continent; and
Barclay and
Penn went to and fro in
Germany, from the Weser to the Mayne, the
Rhine, and the Neckar, distributing tracts, discoursing with men of every sect and every rank, preaching in palaces and among the peasants, rebuking every attempt to inthrall the mind, and sending reproofs to kings and magistrates, to the princes and lawyers of all Christendom.
The soul of
William Penn was transported into fervors of devotion; and, in the ecstasies of enthusiasm, he explained ‘the universal principle’ at
Herford, in the
[
375]
tourt of the princess palatine, and to the few
Quaker converts among the peasantry of Kirchheim.
To the peasantry of the highlands near Worms, the visit of
William Penn was an event never to be forgotten.
The opportunity of observing the aristocratic institutions of
Holland and the free commercial cities of
Germany, was valuable to a statesman.
On his return to
England, the new sufferings of the Quakers excited a direct appeal to the English parliament.
The special law against Papists was turned against the Quakers;
Penn explained the difference between his society and the Papists; and yet, in an age of Protestant bigotry, at a season when that bigotry was become a jealous frenzy, he appeared before a committee of the house of commons to plead for universal liberty of conscience.
‘We must give the liberty we ask;’—such was the sublime language of the Quakers;—‘we cannot be false to our principles, though it were to relieve ourselves; for we would have none to suffer for dissent on any hand.’
Defeated in his hopes by the prorogation and dissolu-
tion of the parliament,
Penn appealed to the people, and took an active part in the ensuing elections.
He urged the electors throughout
England to know their own strength and authority; to hold their representatives to be properly and truly their servants, to maintain their liberties, their share in legislation, and their share in the application of the laws.
‘Your well being’—these were his words—‘depends upon you preservation of your right in the government.
You are free; God, and nature, and the constitution, have made you trustees for posterity.
Choose men who will, by all just and legal ways, firmly keep and zealously promote your power.’
And as
Algernon Sydney now ‘embarked with those
[
376]
that did seek, love, and choose the best things,’ Wil-
liam
Penn, with fearless enthusiasm, engaged in the election, and obtained for him a majority which was defeated only by a false return.
But every hope of reform from parliament vanished.
Bigotry and tyranny prevailed more than ever, and
Penn, despairing of relief in
Europe, bent the whole energy of his mind to accomplish the establishment of a free government in the New World.
For that ‘heavenly end,’ he was prepared by the severe discipline of
life, and the love, without dissimulation, which formed the basis of his character.
The sentiment of cheerful humanity was irrepressibly strong in his bosom; as with
John Eliot and
Roger Williams, benevolence gushed prodigally from his ever-overflowing heart; and when, in his late old age, his intellect was impaired, and his reason prostrated by apoplexy, his sweetness of disposition rose serenely over the clouds of disease.
Possessing an extraordinary greatness of mind, vast conceptions, remarkable for their universality and precision, and ‘surpassing in speculative endowments;’
28 conversant with men, and books, and governments, with various languages, and the forms of political combinations, as they existed in
England and
France, in
Holland, and the principalities and free cities of
Germany, he yet sought the source of wisdom in his own soul.
Humane by nature and by suffering; familiar with the royal family; intimate with
Sunderland and Sydney; acquainted with
Russel,
Halifax,
Shaftesbury, and
Buckingham; as a member of the Royal Society, the peer of
Newton and the great scholars of his age,—he
[
377]
valued the promptings of a free mind more than the
awards of the learned, and reverenced the single-minded sincerity of the
Nottingham shepherd more than the authority of colleges and the wisdom of philosophers.
And now, being in the meridian of life, but a year older than was
Locke, when, twelve years before, he had framed a constitution for
Carolina, the
Quaker legislator was come to the New World to lay the foundations of states.
Would he imitate the vaunted system of the great philosopher?
Locke, like
William Penn, was tolerant; both loved freedom; both cherished truth in sincerity.
But
Locke kindled the torch of liberty at the fires of tradition;
Penn at the living light in the soul.
Locke sought truth through the senses and the outward world;
Penn looked inward to the divine revelations in every mind.
Locke compared the soul to a sheet of white paper, just as
Hobbes had compared it to a slate, on which time and chance might scrawl their experience; to
Penn, the soul was an organ which of itself instinctively breathes divine harmonies, like those
musical instruments which are so curiously and perfectly framed, that, when once set in motion, they of themselves give forth all the melodies designed by the artist that made them.
To
Locke,
29 ‘Conscience is nothing else than our own opinion of our own actions;’ to
Penn, it is the image of God, and his oracle in the soul.
Locke, who was never a father, esteemed ‘the duty of parents to preserve their children not to be understood without reward and punishment;’
30 Penn loved his children, with not a thought for the consequences.
Locke, who was never married, declares marriage an affair of the senses;
31 Penn reverenced woman as the object of fervent,
[
378]
inward affection, made, not for lust, but for love
In studying the understanding,
Locke begins with the sources of knowledge;
Penn with an inventory of our intellectual treasures.
Locke deduces government from
Noah and
Adam, rests it upon contract, and announces its end to be the security of property;
Penn, far from going back to
Adam, or even to
Noah, declares that ‘there must be a people before a government,’
32 and, deducing the right to institute government from man's moral nature, seeks its fundamental rules in the immutable dictates ‘of universal reason,’ its end in freedom and happiness.
The system of
Locke lends itself to contending factions of the most opposite interests and purposes; the doctrine of
Fox and
Penn, being but the common creed of humanity, forbids division, and insures the highest moral unity.
To
Locke, happiness is pleasure;
33 things are good and evil only in reference to pleasure and pain;
34 and to ‘inquire after the highest good is as absurd as to dispute whether the best relish be in apples, plums, or nuts;’
35 Penn esteemed happiness to lie in the subjection of the baser instincts to the instinct of Deity in the breast, good and evil to be eternally and always as unlike as truth and falsehood, and the inquiry after the highest good to involve the purpose of existence.
Locke says plainly, that, but for rewards and punishments beyond the grave, ‘it is
certainly right to eat and drink, and enjoy what we delight in;’
36 Penn, like
Plato and
Fenelon, maintained the doctrine so terrible to despots, that God is to be loved for his own sake, and virtue to be practised for its intrinsic loveliness.
Locke derives the idea of infinity
[
379]
from the senses, describes it as purely negative, and
attributes it to nothing but space, duration, and number;
37 Penn derived the idea from the soul, and ascribed it to truth, and virtue, and God.
Locke declares immortality
38 a matter with which reason has nothing to do, and that revealed truth must be sustained
39 by outward signs and visible acts of power;
Penn saw truth by its own light, and summoned the soul to bear witness to its own glory.
Locke believed ‘not so many men in wrong opinions as is commonly supposed, because the greatest part have no opinions at all, and do not know what they contend for;’
40 Penn likewise vindicated the many, but it was because truth is the common inheritance of the race.
Locke, in his love of tolerance, inveighed against the methods of persecution as ‘Popish practices;’
Penn censured no sect, but condemned bigotry of all sorts as inhuman.
Locke, as an American lawgiver, dreaded a too numerous democracy, and reserved all power to wealth and the feudal proprietaries;
Penn believed that God is in every conscience, his light in every soul; and therefore, stretching out his arms, he built—such are his own words—‘a free colony for all mankind.’
This is the praise of
William Penn, that, in an age which had the a popular revolution shipwreck popular liberty among selfish factions, which had seen
Hugh Peters and
Henry Vane perish by the hangman's cord and the axe; in an age when Sydney nourished the pride of patriotism rather than the sentiment of philanthropy, when
Russel stood for the liberties of his order, and
[
380]
not for new enfranchisements, when
Harrington, and
Shaftesbury, and
Locke, thought government should rest on property,—Penn did not despair of humanity, and, though all history and experience
41 denied the sovereignty of the people, dared to cherish the noble idea of man's capacity for self-government.
Conscious that there was no room for its exercise in
England, the pure enthusiast, like Calvin and
Descartes, a voluntary exile, was come to the banks of the
Delaware to institute ‘the
Holy experiment.’
The news spread rapidly, that the
Quaker king was
at
Newcastle; and,
42 on the day after his landing, in presence of a crowd of Swedes, and
Dutch, and
English, who had gathered round the court-house, his deeds of feoffment were produced; the duke of
York's agent surrendered the territory by the solemn delivery of earth and water, and
Penn, invested with supreme and undefined power in
Delaware, addressed the assembled multitude on government, recommended sobriety and peace, and pledged himself to grant liberty of conscience and civil freedom.
From
Newcastle,
Penn ascended the
Delaware to
Chester, where he was hospitably received by the honest, kind-hearted emigrants who had preceded him from the north of
England; the little village of herdsmen and farmers, with their plain manners, gentle dispositions, and tranquil passions, seemed a harbinger of a golden age.
From
Chester, tradition describes the journey of
Penn to have been continued with a few friends in an
[
381]
open boat, in the earliest days of November, to the
Chap XVI.} 1682 Nov. Dec. |
beautiful bank, fringed with pine-trees, on which the city of
Philadelphia was soon to rise.
In the following weeks,
Penn visited West and East
New Jersey, New York, the metropolis of his neighbor proprietary, the duke of
York, and, after meeting Friends on
Long Island, he returned to the banks of the
Delaware.
43
To this period
44 belongs his first grand treaty with the Indians.
Beneath a large elm-tree at Shakamaxon, on the northern edge of
Philadelphia,
45 William Penn, surrounded by a few friends, in the habiliments of peace, met the numerous delegation of the
Lenni Lenape tribes.
The great treaty was not for the purchase of lands, but, confirming what
Penn had written, and
Markham covenanted, its sublime purpose was the recognition of the equal rights of humanity.
46 Under the shelter of the forest, now leafless by the frosts of autumn,
Penn proclaimed to the men of the Algonquin race, from both banks of the
Delaware, from the borders of the
Schuylkill, and, it may have been, even from the
Susquehannah, the same simple message of peace and love which
George Fox had professed before
Cromwell, and
Mary Fisher had borne to the
Grand Turk.
The
English and the
Indian should respect the same moral law, should be alike secure in their pursuits and their possessions, and adjust every difference by a peaceful tribunal, composed of an equal number of men from each race.
‘We meet’—such were the words of
William Penn
[
382]
—‘on the broad pathway of good faith and good will,
Chap. XVI.} 1682. Nov. Dec. |
no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love.
I will not call you children; for parents sometimes chide their children too severely; nor brothers only; for brothers differ.
The friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain; for that the rains might rust, or the falling tree might break.
We are the same as if one man's body were to be divided into two parts; we are all one flesh and blood.’
The children of the forest were touched by the sacred doctrine, and renounced their guile and their revenge.
They received the presents of
Penn in sincerity; and with hearty friendship they gave the belt of wampum.
‘We will live,’ said they, ‘in love with
William Penn and his children, as long as the moon and the sun shall endure.’
This treaty of peace and friendship was made under the open sky, by the side of the
Delaware, with the sun, and the river, and the forest, for witnesses.
It was not confirmed by an oath; it was not ratified by signatures and seals; no written record of the conference can be found; and its terms and conditions had no abiding monument but on the heart.
There they were written like the law of God, and were never forgotten.
The simple sons of the wilderness, returning to their wigwams, kept the history of the covenant by strings of wampum, and, long afterwards, in their cabins, would count over the shells on a clean piece of bark, and recall to their own memory, and repeat to their children or to the stranger, the words of William
Penn.47 New England had just terminated a disastrous
[
383]
war of extermination; the
Dutch were scarcely ever
at peace with the Algonquins; the laws of
Maryland refer to Indian hostilities and massacres, which extend-1682 ed as far as
Richmond.
Penn came without arms; he declared his purpose to abstain from violence; he had no message but peace; and not a drop of
Quaker blood was ever shed by an Indian.
Was there not progress from Melendez to
Roger Williams?
from
Cortez and
Pizarro to
William Penn?
The
Quakers, ignorant of the homage which their virtues would receive from
Voltaire and
Raynal, men so unlike themselves, exulted in the consciousness of their humanity.
We have done better, said they truly, ‘than if, with the proud
Spaniards, we had gained the mines of
Potosi.
We may make the ambitious heroes, whom the world admires, blush for their shameful victories.
To the poor, dark souls round about us we teach their rights as men.’
48
The scene at Shackamaxon forms the subject of one of the pictures of
West; but the artist, faithful neither to the Indians nor to
Penn, should have no influence on history.
49 Shall the event be commemorated by the pencil?
Imagine the chiefs of the savage communities, of noble shape and grave demeanor, assembled in council without arms; the old men sit in a half-moon upon the ground; the middle-aged are in a like figure at a little distance behind them; the young foresters form a third semicircle in the rear.
Before them stands
William Penn, graceful in the summer of life, in dress scarce distinguished by a belt, surrounded by a few Friends, chiefly young men, and, like
Anaxagoras,
[
384]
whose example he cherished, pointing to the skies,
as the tranquil home, to which not Christians only, but
the souls of heathen go,
Who better live than we, though less they know.
In the following year,
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. He spoke with them of religion, and found that the tawny skin did not exclude the instinct of a Deity.
‘The poor savage people believed in God and the soul without the aid of metaphysics.’
He touched the secret springs of sympathy, and succeeding generations on the
Susquehannah 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: 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.
[
385]
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 tithes.
The
Swedes, and Finns, and
Dutch, were invested with the liberties of Englishmen.
Well might
Lawrence Cook exclaim in their behalf, ‘It is the best day we have ever seen.’
The work of legislation being finished, the proprietary urged upon the house his religious counsel,
50 and the assembly was adjourned.
The government having been organized,
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.
The adjustment was difficult.
Lord Baltimore claimed by his charter the whole country as far as the fortieth degree.
Penn replied, just as the
Dutch and the agents of the duke of
York had always urged, that the charter for
Maryland included only lands that were still unoccupied; that the banks of the
Delaware had been
[
386]
purchased, appropriated, and colonized, before that
charter was written.
For more than fifty years, the country had been in the hands of the
Dutch and their successors; and during that whole period, the claim of Lord Baltimore had always been resisted.
The answer of
Penn was true, and conformed to English law as applied to the colonies.
In 1623, the
Dutch had built Fort Nassau, in New Jersey; and the soil of
Delaware was purchased by Godyn, and colonized by
De Vries, before the promise of King Charles to
Sir George Calvert.
This is the basis of the claim of
William Penn; and its justice had already been repeatedly sustained.
Penn knew that it was just; yet his sweetness of disposition prompted an apology for insisting on his right.
It was not ‘for the love of land, but of the water.’
Historians have wronged themselves by attributing to
Penn the folly of urging the eagerness of his own desires, as an argument for his pretensions.
His own letters and the published proceedings
51 of the committee of trade and plantations prove the singleness of the plea on which he rested; the voyages of
De Vries, and the records of
Maryland and of New York, establish its validity.
But what line should be esteemed the limit of New Netherland?
This remained a subject for compromise.
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.
The enthusiasm of
William Penn sustained his ex-
cited mind in unceasing exertion; and he now selected
[
387]
a site for a city, purchased the ground of the Swedes,
Chap XVI.} 1683 Jan. and Feb. |
and in a situation ‘not surpassed’—such are his words —‘by one among all the many places he had seen in the world,’—and he had seen the cities of
Europe from and
Bremen to
Turin,—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.
Pleasant visions of innocence and happiness floated before the imagination of his
Quaker brethren.
‘Here,’ said they, ‘we may worship God according to the dictates of the
Divine Principle, free from the mouldy errors of tradition; here we may thrive, in peace and retirement, in the lap of unadulterated nature; here we may improve an innocent course of life on a virgin Elysian shore.’
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.
In March, the infant city, in which there could have
been few mansions but hollow trees,
52 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
[
388]
New World, and bear date in
Philadelphia.
53 ‘To the
people of this place,’ said
Penn, ‘I am not like a selfish man; through my travail and pains the province came; it is now in Friends' hands.
Our faith is for one another, that God will be our counsellor forever.’
And when the general assembly came together, he 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 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
54 on all the doings of the
[
389]
council, and such a power was virtually a right to neg-
ative 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 established in 1683; it was distinctly recognized 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, I believe, the opinion of the colonists of that day;
55 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 behavior, could not be removed by the proprietary during the term for which they were commissioned.
56 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;
57 in
Pennsylvania,
William Penn could not appoint a justice or a constable; every executive officer, except the highest,
[
390]
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,
58 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.’
59 ‘I desired,’ says
Penn, ‘to show men as free and as happy as they can be.’
60 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 any thing that would make them happier, I should readily grant it.’
61
When Peter, the great
Russian reformer, attended in
England a meeting of Quakers, the semibarbarous philanthropist could not but exclaim, ‘How happy must be a community instituted on their principles!’
‘Beautiful!’
said the philosophic
Frederic of
Prussia, when, a hundred years later, he read the account of the government of
Pennsylvania; ‘it is perfect, if it can endure.’
62 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
[
391]
and
Delaware.
It remained to dislodge super-
stition 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 grounds of the accusation were canvassed; the witnesses calmly examined; and 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 bucaniers.
63
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
England and
Wales,
64 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
Oxenstiern 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
[
392]
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 August, 1683, ‘
Philadelphia consisted of three or four little cottages;’
65 the conies were yet undisturbed in their hereditary burrows; the deer fearlessly bounded past blazed trees, unconscious of foreboded streets; the stranger that wandered from the river bank was lost in the thickets of the interminable forest; and, two years afterwards, the place contained about six hundred houses,
66 and the schoolmaster and the printingpress had begun their work.
67 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 among us.’
68
The government had been organized, peace with the natives confirmed, the fundamental law established, the courts of justice instituted; 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 is friend
Lloyd, and the executive power to a committee
[
393]
of the council,
Penn sailed for
England, 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 distance 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.
I bless you in the name and power of the
Lord, and may God bless you with his righteousness, peace, and plenty, all the land over.’—‘You are come to a quiet land, and liberty and authority are in your hands.
Rule for Him under whom the princes of this world will one day esteem it their honor to govern in their places.’—‘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.’
And after he reached
England, he assured the eager
inquirers, that ‘things went on sweetly with Friends in
Pennsylvania; that they increased finely in outward things and in wisdom.’
The question respecting the boundaries between the domains of Lord Baltimore and of
William Penn was
promptly resumed before the committee of trade and
[
394]
plantations; and, after many hearings, it was decided,
Chap. XVI.} 1685. Oct. 17. Nov. 7. |
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.
There is no reason to suppose any undue bias on the minds of the committee; had a wrong been suspected, the decision would have been reversed at the revolution of 1688.
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 later, they were, by agreement, more accurately defined; and in 1761, commissioners began to designate the limit of
Maryland on the side of
Pennsylvania and
Delaware.
In 1763,
Charles Mason and
Jeremiah Dixon, two mathematicians or surveyors, were engaged to mark the lines.
In 1764 they entered upon their task, with good instruments and a corps of axemen; by the middle of June, 1765, they had traced the parallel of latitude to the
Susquehannah; a year later they climbed the little
Alleghany; in 1767 they carried forward their work under an escort from the Six Nations, to an Indian war-path, two hundred and fortyfour miles from the
Delaware river.
Other hands, at a later day, continued
Mason and
Dixon's line to the
West, as the
Southern boundary of
Pennsylvania.
69
But the care of colonial property did not absorb the enthusiasm of
Penn; and, now that his father's friend
[
395]
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,
70 he had advocated, with
Buckingham 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, not less that 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
Massachusetts71 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,
72 which the blameless philosopher, in the just pride of innocence, refused.
And at the very time when the
Roman Catholic Fenelon, in
France, was pleading for Protestants
[
396]
against the intolerance of Louis XIV.
the
Protestant
Penn, in
England, was laboring to rescue the
Roman Catholics from the jealousy of the
English aristocracy.
Claiming for the executive of the country the prerogative of employing every person, ‘according to his ability, and not according to his opinion,’ he labored to effect a repeal of every disfranchisement for opinion.
Always a friend to liberty as established by law, ever ready to deepen the vestiges of British free dom, and vindicate the right of ‘the free
Saxon people to be governed by laws of which they themselves were the makers,’
73 his whole soul was bent on effecting this end by means of parliament during the reign of James II., well knowing that the prince of
Orange was pledged to a less liberal policy.
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 resisted the tyrannical proceedings against Magdalen College, and yet desired that the universities might not be altogether shut against dissenters.
No man in
England was more opposed to
Roman Catholic dominion; but, like an honest lover of truth, and well aware that he and
George Fox could win more converts than James II.
and the pope with all their patronage, he desired, in the controversy with the Roman church, nothing but equality.
He knew that Popery was in
England the party of the past, from causes that lay in the heart of society, incapable of restoration; and therefore he ridiculed the Popish panic as
[
397]
a scarecrow fit only to frighten children.
74 Such was
the strong antipathy of
England to the
Roman see, he foretold the sure success of the English church, if it should plough with that heifer, but equally predicted the still later result, that the Catholics, in their turn becoming champions of civil freedom, would unite with its other advocates, and impair and subvert the
English hierarchy.
75 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.
76 His private correspondence proves that he esteemed parliament
77 the only power through which his end could be gained; and, in the true spirit of popular liberty, he sought to infuse his principles into the popular mind, that so they might find their place in the statute-book through the free convictions of his countrymen.
England to-day confesses his sagacity, and is doing honor 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, is slowly but firmly asserting its power over the legislation of
Great Britain.
[
398]
The political connections of
William Penn have in-
volved 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.
There are not wanting those who believe the many to be the most competent judge of the beautiful; every
Quaker believes them the best arbiter of the just and the true.
It is certain that they, and they only, are the dispensers of glory.
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;
78 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
Susquehannah 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; his philanthropy, establishing popular power, left him without a revenue; and he who had so often been imprisoned for religion, in his old age went to jail for debt.
But what is so terrible as remorse?
what so soothing as an approving conscience?
William Penn was happy.
‘He
[
399]
could say it before the
Lord, he had the comfort of
having approved himself a faithful steward to his understanding and ability.’
79
Meanwhile the
Quaker legislators in the woods of
Pennsylvania were serving their novitiate in popular legislation.
To complain, to impeach, to institute committees of inquiry, to send for persons and papers, to quarrel with the executive,—all was attempted, and all without permanent harm.
But the character of parties was already evident; and the people, with an irresistible propension, tended towards the fixed design of impairing the revenues, and diminishing the little remaining authority, of their feudal sovereign.
80 Penn had reserved large tracts of territory as his private property; he alone could purchase the soil from the natives; and he reserved quitrents on the lands which he sold.
Pennsylvania, for nearly a century, sought to impair the exclusive right to preemption, and to compel an appropriation of the income from quitrents, in part at least, to the public service.
Colonial jealousy of a feudal chief was early and perseveringly displayed.
The maker of
the first Pennsylvania almanac was censured for publishing
Penn as a lord.
81 The assembly originated
bills without scruple; they attempted a new organization of the judiciary; they alarmed the merchants by their lenity towards debtors; they would vote no taxes; they claimed the right of inspecting the
records, and displacing the officers of the courts; they expelled a member who reminded them of their contravening
[
400]
the provisions of their charter.
82 The executive
Chap XVI.} 1687 Feb. 1, 1688 |
power was also imperfectly administered: for the whole council was too numerous a body for its regular exercise.
A commission of five was substituted;
83 and finally, when it was resolved to appoint a deputygov-ernor,
84 the choice of the proprietary was not wisely made.
In a word, folly and passion, not less than justice and wisdom, had become enfranchised on the
Delaware, and were desperately bent on the exercise of their privileges.
Free scope was opened to every whim that enthusiasts might propose as oracles from the skies, to every selfish desire that could lurk under the
Quaker garb.
But the smiling light of prosperity rose serenely over the little clouds of discontent, and the swelling passions of the young apprentices at legislation died away at the adjournments.
85 To freedom and justice a fair field was given, and they were safe.
86
Peace also was uninterrupted.
Once, indeed, it was rumored, that on the
Brandywine five hundred Indians were assembled to concert a massacre.
Immediately
Caleb Pusey, with five Friends, hastened unarmed to the scene of anticipated danger.
The sachem repelled the calumnious report with indignation; and the little griefs of the tribe were canvassed and assuaged.
‘The great God, who made all mankind, extends his love to Indians and English.
The rain and the dews fall alike on the ground of both; the sun shines on us equally; and we ought to love one another.’
Such
[
401]
was the diplomacy of the
Quaker envoy.
The king
of the Delawares answered, ‘What you say is true.
Go home, and harvest the corn God has given you. We intend you no harm.’
The white man agreed with the red man to love one another.
Would he love the negro also, and refuse homage from the African?
William Penn employed blacks without scruple.
The free Society of Traders, which he chartered and encouraged, in its first public agreement
87 relating to them, did but substitute, after fourteen years service, the severe condition of adscripts to the soil, for that of slaves.
At a later day, he endeavored to secure to the African mental and moral culture, the rights and happiness of domestic life.
His efforts were not successful, and he himself died a slave-holder.
88 On the subject of negro slavery, the German mind was least enthralled by prejudice, because
Germany had never yet participated in the slave-trade.
The
Swedish and
German colony of
Gustavus Adolphus was designed to rest on free labor.
If the
general meeting of the Quakers for a season forbore a positive judgment, already, in 1688, ‘the poor hearts’ from Kirchheim, ‘the little handful’ of German Friends from the highlands above the
Rhine, came to the resolution that it was not lawful for Christians to buy or to keep negro slaves.
89
This decision of the German emigrants on negro slavery, was taken during the lifetime of
George Fox, who recognized no distinction of race.
‘Let your light shine among the Indians, the blacks, and the
[
402]
whites,’ was his message to Quakers on the
Dela-
ware.
His heart was with the settlements of which he had been the pioneer; and, a few weeks before his death, he exhorted Friends in
America to be the light of the world, the salt to preserve earth from corruption.
Covetousness, he adds, is idolatry; and he bids them beware of that ‘idol for which so many lose morality and humanity.’
On his death-bed, the venerable apostle of equality
was lifted above the fear of dying, and, esteeming the change hardly deserving of mention, his thoughts turned to the New World.
Pennsylvania, arid
Delaware, and
West New Jersey, and now
Rhode Island, and in some measure
North Carolina, were
Quaker states; as his spirit, awakening from its converse with shadows, escaped from the exile of fallen humanity, nearly his last words were—‘Mind poor Friends in
America.’
His works praise him. Neither time nor place can dissolve fellowship with his spirit.
To his name
William Penn left this short epitaph—‘Many sons have done virtuously in this day; but, dear George, thou excellest them all.’
Were his principles thus excellent?
An opposite system was developed in the dominions of the duke of
York 
