Algernon Sidney now "embarked with those that did seek love, and choose the best things," William Penn engaged in the contest for his election, and greatly assisted in obtaining for him a majority which was defeated only by a false return.

Despairing of relief in Europe, Penn bent his energies to the establishment of a free government in the New World. And now, in October, 1682, being in the meridian of life, but a year older than was Locke when, twelve years before, he had assisted in framing a constitution for Carolina, the Quaker legislator was come to the New World to lay the foundations of states. 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 may scrawl their experience; to Penn, the soul was an organ which of itself instinctively breathes divine harmonies. To Locke, "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;" Penn loved his children, with not a thought for the consequences. Locke, who was never married, declares marriage an affair of the senses; Penn reverenced woman as the object of fervent, 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," 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; things are good and evil only in reference to pleasure and pain; and to "inquire after the highest good is as absurd as to dispute whether the best relish be in apples, plums, or nuts;" 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; " Penn, like Plato and Fénelon, maintained the doctrine so terrible to despots that God is to be loved for his own sake, and virtue to be practiced for its intrinsic loveliness. Locke derives the idea of infinity from the senses, describes it as purely negative, and attributes it to nothing but space, duration, and number; Penn derived the idea from the soul, and ascribed it to truth and virtue and God. Locke declares immortality a matter with which reason has nothing to do, and that revealed truth must be sustained 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;" 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 law-giver, dreaded a too numerous democracy, and reserved all power to wealth and feudal proprietaries; Penn believed that God is in every conscience, his light in every soul; and therefore 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 seen a popular revolution shipwreck popular liberty among selfish factions, which had seen Hugh Peter and Henry

Vane perish by the hangman's cord and the axe; in an age when Sidney nourished the pride of patriotism rather than the sentiment of philanthropy, when Russell stood for the liberties of his order and not for new enfranchisements, when Harrington and Shaftesbury and Locke thought government should rest on property-he did not despair of humanity, and, though all history and experience denied the sovereignty of the people, dared to cherish the noble idea of man's capacity for self-government and right to it. 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, on the twenty-eighth of October, 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 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.

On the same day Penn ascended the Delaware to Chester, where he was hospitably received by the emigrants who had preceded him from the north of England; the village of herdsmen and farmers, with their plain manners 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 open boat, in the earliest days of November, to the bank on which the city of Philadelphia was soon to rise.

For the 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 lands which form the state of Delaware; these were then ehfranchised by the joint act of the inhabitants and the proprietary, and united

with Pennsylvania on the basis of equal rights. The freedom of all being thus confirmed, the Inward Voice, which was the celestial visitant of 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 rest, for the ease of the creation. Equality was introduced into families by abrogating the privileges of primogeniture. The word, the contract, or the testimony of a man, required no confirmation by oath. The spirit of speculation was checked by a system of strict accountability, applied to factors and agents. Every resident who paid scot and lot to the governor 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 pleasures of the senses, masks, revels, and stageplays, 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 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, and the assembly was adjourned.

The government having been organized, William Penn, in December, 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 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 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. 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, returning to his own province, prepared to renew negotiation or to submit to arbitration in England.

In the first weeks of 1683, William Penn, having purchased of the Swedes the neck of land between the Schuylkill and Delaware, marked out for a town by the convenience of the rivers, the firmness of the land, the pure springs and salubrious air, "in a situation," such are his own words, "not surpassed by one among all the many places" he had seen in the world, he laid out Philadelphia, the city of refuge, the mansion of freedom. "Here," said his Quaker brethren, "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 is the birthplace of American independence and the pledge of union.

In March, the infant city was the scene of legislation. From each of the six counties into which Penn's dominions were divided, nine representatives, Swedes, Dutch, and English, were elected for the purpose of establishing a charter of liberties. They desired it might be the acknowledged growth of the New World, and bear date in Philadelphia. "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