XVI. THE FRAME OF GOVERNMENT FOR PENNSYLVANIA. 390 CHAP. 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;1 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.' "I desired," says Penn, "to show men as free and as happy as they can be." In the decline of life, the language of his 1710. heart was still the same. "If, in the relation between ," he writes in his old age, "the people want of me any thing that would make them happier, I should readily grant it."4 us, 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." 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 Pennsyl 1 Penn to a society of traders. 2 Votes, &c. 21. 3 Watson, 20. 4 Watson, 29. Proud, ii. 45. 5 Herder, xiii. 116. vania and Delaware. It remained to dislodge super- CHAP. stition from its hiding-places in the mind. The Scan XVI. 27. dinavian emigrants came from their native forests with imaginations clouded by the gloomy terrors of an invisible world of fiends; and a turbulent woman was 1684. 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.1 2 1688 Meantime the news spread abroad, that William 1683 Penn, the Quaker, had opened "an asylum to the good to and the oppressed of every nation;" and humanity went through Europe, gathering the children of misfortune. From England and Wales, 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 Hazard's Register, i. 16, 108, 289. 2 Ibid. vi. 238, 239 392 RAPID PROGRESS OF PENNSYLVANIA. CHAP. Penn, the Quaker emissary, renounced their German homes for the protection of the Quaker king. XVI. 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;" 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, and the schoolmaster ånd the printingpress had begun their work. 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, 1684. 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."4 Mar. 9. 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 his friend Lloyd, and the executive power to a com 1 Pastorius, in Watson, 61. ii. 8, 9. Council Records, in Proud, i. 345. 19. 4 Penn to Halifax, in Watson, XVI. mittee of the council, Penn sailed for England, leaving CHAP freedom to its own development. His departure was happy for the colony and for his own tranquillity. He 1684. Aug. had established a democracy, and was himself a feudal 12 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 Oct. 3 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 50 VOL. II. Dec 9. 394 MASON AND DIXON'S LINE PENN'S BOUNDARY. Oct. 17. Nov. CHAP plantations; and, after many hearings, it was decided, XVI. that the tract of Delaware did not constitute a part of 1685. 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. 7. 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 afterwards, they were, by agreement, more accurately defined; and in 1761, the line between Maryland and Pennsylvania towards the west, was run by Mason and Dixon. That that line forms the present division between the states resting on free labor, and the states that tolerate slavery, is due, not to the philanthropy of Quakers alone, but to climate. Delaware lies between the same parallels as Maryland; and Quakerism has not exempted it from negro slavery. But the care of colonial property did not absorb the enthusiasm of Penn; and, now that his father's friend 1 The statement in the text is made deliberately. The documents in part are in Votes and Proceed ings, xv. &c. In matters of property, as such, James II. was scrupulously honest. The ground on which Penn rested was true. For the case, in 1737, see Haz. Reg. ii. 200. To that controversy belongs the more than usually correct pamphlet "A short Account of the First Settlement of the Provinces of Virginia, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania,” enu 1735. The authorities are merated p. 14. The plea taken as to the beginning of the 40th degree is not a plea of William Penn, and is unjust in itself. Compare J. Dunlap's Memoir, in Mem. P. H. S. i. 161-196. "Such settlement seems incontrovertible." p. 171. The Records of Albany and Maryland, and the Voyage of De Vries, change the seeming into a certainty. See Penn to North, Rochester, and Halifax, in Mem. P. H. S. i. 412–422. |