PENN'S FAREWELL TO HIS COLONY. 393 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 water can quench it, nor to you and with you, and no 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. 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 17. remained to be settled; and the present limits of Del Oct. Nov 7. aware were established by a compromise. There is no reason to suppose any undue bias on the minds of the committee;1 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 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 enu 1 The statement in the text is 1735. The authorities are merated p. 14. The plea taken as PENN ADVOCATES ENGLISH FREEDOM. 1 XVI. 395 had succeeded to the throne, he employed his fortune, CHAP his influence, and his fame, to secure that "IMPARTIAL” liberty of conscience, which, for nearly twenty years,1 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 1686 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 Massachusetts 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, 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 Prot 2 1 Penn, in Proud, i. 325. So Penn, in his autograph Apology. This was communicated to me in MS. by J. F. Fisher, who has since caused it to be printed. It is a most honorable office to do justice to the illustrious dead. My friend writes of Penn with affectionate interest, and yet with careful criticism. True criticism does not 3 consist in absolute skepticism as to 2 Lambeth MSS., communicated 3 Mackintosh, p. 289. Am. ed. refers to Clarkson. The original authority for the fact is Le Clerc, from whom it passed into the Biographia Britannica. XVI. CHAP. estants 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," 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 1 Penn, iii. 220, and 273, 274. PENN ADVOCATES ENGLISH FREEDOM. 2 XVI. $97 a scarecrow fit only to frighten children.1 Such was CHAP. 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. 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.3 His private correspondence proves that he esteemed parliament 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. 4 rison, in Proud, i. 308. Burnet |