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."

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. 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.

CHAPTER XVI.

PENNSYLVANIA.

Ir was for the grant of a territory on the opposite bank of the Delaware that William Penn, in June, 1680, became a suitor. His father, distinguished in English history by the conquest of Jamaica, and by his conduct, 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. To Charles II., always embarrassed for money, the grant of a province was the easiest mode of cancelling the debt. Penn had friends in North, Halifax, and Sunderland; and a pledge given to his father on his death-bed obtained for him the favor of the duke of York. With such support, he triumphed over "great opposition," and obtained a charter for the territory, which received from Charles II. the name of Pennsylvania, and 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, to 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 nothing 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 par

liament. The acts of the future colonial legislature were to be submitted to the king and council, who might annul them if contrary to English law. The right to levy customs was expressly reserved to parliament. The bishop of London, quite unnecessarily, required security for the English church. The people 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, on the fifth of March, 1681, "after many waitings, 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 lands which had been granted to Dutch and English by the Dutch West India company and by the duke of York. The royal proclamation of the second of April announced to the inhabitants of the province that William Penn, their absolute proprietary, was invested with all powers and pre-eminences necessary for the government. The proprietary issued a proclamation 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 undertook before, yet God has given me an understanding 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

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you in the way of righteousness, and therein prosper you and your children after you. I am your true Friend,

"WM. PENN.

'LONDON, 8th of the month called April, 1681."

Such were the pledges of the Quaker sovereign on assuming the government; during his long reign, these pledges were faithfully redeemed. He never refused the free men of Pennsylvania a reasonable desire.

With this letter to the inhabitants, William Markham sailed in May 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. In July, the conditions for the sale of lands were reciprocally ratified by Penn and a company of adventurers. The enterprise of planting a province would have been vast for a man of large fortune; Penn's 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. 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 bound by his religion to equal laws. "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."

With a company of emigrants, full instructions were forwarded, in September, 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." In October, he addressed a letter to the natives 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.

Meantime, the mind of Penn was deeply agitated by thoughts on the government which he should establish. 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." Penn was superior to avarice, and he had risen above ambition; but he loved to do good; and could passionate philanthropy resign absolute power apparently so favorable to the exercise of vast benevolence? "I purpose" —such was the prompt decision which he announced in May, 1682-“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." "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, he published a frame of government, not as a conceded constitution, but as a system to be referred to the freemen in Pennsylvania.

In the same month 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."

To perfect his territory, Penn desired 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 Netherland had been esteemed an appendage