force of an honest profession of truth, the humblest person, if single-minded and firm, "can shake all the country forten 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 with astonishment, overthrown their altars, discredited 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 in 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."

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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 every man."

He is in every breast, in the ignorant 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 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.

As

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 endowments. the human race ascends the steep acclivity of improvement, the Quaker cherishes woman as the equal companion of the journey.

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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

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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 favoured of his race, even though endowed with the gifts and glories of an angel, he would regard but as his fellow-servant and his brother. The feudal nobility still nourished its pride. "Nothing," says Penn, "nothing 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 honour stamped 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 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. Everywhere 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, everywhere,

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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 Fox 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 1674. 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 quit-rents 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 1675. 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 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

1676.

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 afterages to understand their liberty as Christians and as men, that they may not be brought into bondage, but by

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their own consent; for we put the POWER IN THE 1677. 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.

No man, nor number of men, hath power over conscience. 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