1673.]

HISTORY OF NEW JERSEY.

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Philip Carteret was displaced, and his office transferred to the young and frivolous James Carteret. The proprietary officers could make no resistance. Following the advice of the council, after appointing John Berry as his deputy, Philip Carteret hastened to England in search of new authority, while the colonists remained in the undisturbed possession of their farms.

On the recovery of New Netherlands by the Dutch, in 1673, the people of New Jersey, for fifteen months, acknowledged their supremacy; but each town still nominated its own magistrates. In the Elizabethtown code, framed at that period, Puritan austerity was so tempered by Dutch indifference, that mercy itself could hardly have dictated a milder system. On the final surrender of New Netherlands to England, in October, 1673, changes took place in the organization of New Jersey. The banks of the Delaware were reserved for men who had been taught by the uneducated son of a poor Leicestershire weaver to seek the principle of God in their own hearts.

It is the peculiar glory of England, that her history is marked by an original, constant, and increasing political activity of the people. In the fourteenth century, the peasantry, conducted by tilers, and carters, and ploughmen, demanded of their young king a deliverance from the bondage and burdens of feudal oppression; in the fifteenth century, the last traces of villenage were wiped away; in the sixteenth, the noblest ideas of human destiny, awakening in the common mind, became the central points round which plebeian sects were gathered; in the seventeenth century, the enfranchised yeomanry began to feel a kindling impulse for a universal reform; and the moment arrived, when the plebeian mind should make its boldest effort to escape from hereditary prejudices; when the freedom of Bacon, the enthusiasm of Wickliffe, and the politics of Wat Tyler, were to gain the highest unity in a sect; when a popular, and therefore, in that age, a religious party, building upon a divine principle, should demand freedom of mind, purity of morals, and universal enfranchisement.

The sect had its birth in a period of intense public activity; when the heart of England was swelling with passions, and the public mind turbulent with factious leaders; when zeal for reform was invading the church, subverting the throne, and repealing the privileges of feudalism; when Presbyterians in every village were quarrelling with Anabaptists and Independents, and all with the Roman Catholics and the English Church.

66

The sect could arise only among the common people, who had every thing to gain by its success, and the least to hazard by its failure. The privileged classes had no motive to develop a principle before which their privileges would crumble. "Poor mechanics," said William Penn, are wont to be God's great ambassadors to mankind." “He hath raised up a few despicable and illiterate men," said the accomplished Barclay, 66 to dispense the more full glad tidings reserved for our age." And George Fox, the first messenger who restored the simplicity of truth, was of low degree in early life an apprentice to a Nottingham shoemaker, familiar with the Bible, ignorant of the learning of schools.

The rise of the people called Quakers is one of the memorable events in the history of man. It marks the moment when intellectual freedom was claimed unconditionally by the people as an inalienable birthright. To the masses in that age all reflection on politics and morals presented itself under a theological form. The Quaker doctrine is philosophy, summoned from the cloister, the college, and the saloon, and planted among the most despised of the people.

The mind of George Fox had the highest systematic sagacity; and his doctrine, developed and rendered illustrious by Barclay and Penn, was distinguished by its unity. The Quaker has but one word, THE INNER LIGHT, the voice of God in the soul. That light is a reality, and therefore, in its freedom, the highest revelation of truth; it is kindred with the Spirit of God, and therefore merits dominion as the guide to virtue; it shines in every man's breast, and therefore joins the whole

PERSECUTION OF THE QUAKERS

37

human race in the unity of equal rights. Intellectual freedom, the supremacy of mind, universal enfranchisement, these three points include the whole of Quakerism, as far as it belongs to civil history.

Every where in Europe the Quakers were exposed to persecution. Their seriousness was called melancholy enthusiasm; 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, every where, and for long, wearisome years, they were exposed to perpetual dangers and griefs. They were whipped, crowded into jail 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 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 quitrents 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 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 dwellingplace 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. But the Quakers wished more; they desired to possess a territory where they could institute a government; and, in August, 1676, 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 CONCES

1677.]

QUAKER SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.

39

SIONS 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 after ages to understand their liberty as Christians and as men, that they may not be brought into bondage, but by their own consent; for we put THE POWER IN THE PEOPLE." And on the third day of March, 1677, the charter, or fundamental laws of West New Jersey, were perfected and published.

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 chosen directly by the people; the judges, appointed by the general assembly, retained office but two years at the most, and sat in the courts but as assistants to the jury. In the twelve men, and in them only, judgment resides; in them, and in the general assembly, rests discretion as to punishments. "All and every person in the province shall, by the help of the Lord and these fundamentals, be free from oppression and slavery." No man can be imprisoned for debt. Courts were to be managed without the necessity of an attorney or counsellor. The native was protected against encroachments, the helpless orphan educated by the state.

Immediately the English Quakers, with the good