wishes of Charles II., flocked to West New Jersey; and commissioners, possessing a temporary authority, were sent to administer affairs, till a popular government could be instituted. When the vessel, freighted with the men of peace, arrived in America, Andros, the governor of New York, claimed jurisdiction over their territory. The claim, which, on the feudal system, was perhaps a just one, was compromised as a present question, and referred for decision to England. Meantime lands were purchased of the Indians; the planters numbered nearly four hundred souls; and already, at Burlington, under a tent covered with sail-cloth, the Quakers began to hold religious meetings. In 1678, the Indian kings gathered in council amidst the shades of the Burlington forests, and declared their joy at the prospect of permanent peace. "You are our brothers," said the sachems, "and we will live like brothers with you. We will have a broad path for you and us to walk in. If an Englishman falls asleep in this path, the Indian shall pass him by, and say, He is an Englishman; he is asleep; let him alone. The path shall be plain; there shall not be in it a stump to hurt the feet."

Every thing augured success to the colony, but that, at Newcastle, the agent of the duke of York, who still possessed Delaware, exacted customs of the ships ascending to New Jersey. It may have been honestly believed that his jurisdiction included the whole river; when urgent remonstrances were made, the duke freely referred the question to a disinterested commis

sion.

The argument of the Quakers breathes the spirit of Anglo-Saxons, and was triumphant. Sir William Jones decided that, as the grant from the duke of York had reserved no profit or jurisdiction, the tax was illegal. In 1680, the duke of York acquiesced in the decision, and in a new indenture relinquished every claim to the territory and the government.

After such trials, vicissitudes, and success, the light

1681.]

PROSPERITY OF WEST NEW JERSEY.

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of peace dawned upon West New Jersey; and, in November, 1681, Jennings, acting as governor for the proprietaries, convened the first legislative assembly of the representatives of men who said thee and thou to all the world, and wore their hats in presence of beggar or king. Their first measures established their rights by an act of fundamental legislation, and, in the spirit of "the Concessions," they framed their government on the basis of humanity. Neither faith, nor wealth, ́nor race, was respected. They met in the wilderness as men, and founded society on equal rights. They levied for the expenses of their commonwealth two hundred pounds, to be paid in corn, or skins, or money; they voted the governor a salary of twenty pounds; they prohibited the sale of ardent spirits to the Indians; they forbade imprisonment for debt. The little government of a few hundred souls soon increased to thousands. The people rejoiced under the reign of God, confident that he would beautify the meek with salvation. A loving correspondence began with Friends in England; and from the fathers of the sect frequent messages were received.

In the midst of this innocent tranquillity, Byllinge, the original grantee of Berkeley, claimed, as proprietary, the right of nominating the deputy-governor. The usurpation was resisted. Byllinge grew importunate; and the Quakers, setting a new precedent, amended their constitutions according to the prescribed method, and then elected a governor. "The people's choice

was the foundation of the whole." This method of reform was the advice of William Penn, who, in June, 1680, had become a suitor for a grant of territory on the opposite bank of the Delaware.

CHAPTER XXXI.

COLONIZATION OF PENNSYLVANIA.

THE Son and grandson of naval officers, the thoughts of William Penn had from boyhood been directed to the ocean; the conquest of Jamaica by his father early familiarized his imagination with the New World, and, at the age of seventeen, he indulged in visions of happiness, of which America was the scene. Bred in the school of Independency, he had, while hardly twelve. years old, learned to listen to the voice of God in his soul; and at Oxford, in 1661, the words of a Quaker preacher so touched his heart, that he was fined, and afterwards expelled, for non-conformity. To complete his education, William Penn received a father's permission to visit the continent; and in the college at Saumur, under the guidance of the gifted and benevolent Amyrault, his mind was trained in the severities of Calvinism, as tempered by the spirit of universal love.

In 1664, Penn was recalled, to assume the care of the estates of the family, and to gain a knowledge of English law, as a student of Lincoln's Inn.

Having thus perfected his understanding by the learning of Oxford, the religion and philosophy of the French Huguenots and France, and the study of the laws of England; in the bloom of youth, being of engaging manners, and so skilled in the use of the sword that he easily disarmed an antagonist; of great natural vivacity, and gay good humor; the career of wealth and preferment opened before him through the influence of his father and the ready favor of his sovereign. But his mind was already imbued with " a deep sense of the vanity of the world, and the irreligiousness of its religions."

At length, in 1666, on a journey in Ireland, William Penn heard his old friend Thomas Loe speak of the faith that overcomes the world: the fires of enthusiasm

PREVIOUS LIFE OF WILLIAM PENN.

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at once blazed up within him, and he renounced every hope for the path of integrity. It is a path into which, says Penn, "God, in his everlasting kindness, guided my feet in the flower of my youth, when about two-andtwenty years of age." And in the autumn of that year, he was in jail for the crime of listening to the voice of conscience. 'Religion' such was his remonstrance to the viceroy of Ireland "is my crime and my innocence; it makes me a prisoner to malice, but my own freeman."

After his enlargement, returning to England, he encountered bitter mockings and scornings; it was noised about, in the fashionable world, as an excellent jest, that "William Penn was a Quaker again, or some very melancholy thing; " and his father, in anger, turned him penniless out of doors.

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The outcast, saved from extreme indigence by a mother's fondness, was urging the cause of freedom with importunity, when, in the heyday of youth, he was consigned to a long and close imprisonment in the Tower. His offence was heresy. The bishop of London menaced him with imprisonment for life unless he would recant. My prison shall be my grave," answered Penn. The kind-hearted Charles II. sent the humane and candid Stillingfleet to calm the young enthusiast. "The Tower" - such was Penn's message to the king—"is to me the worst argument in the world;" and he demanded freedom "as the natural privilege of an Englishman." After about nine months, his prison door was opened by the intercession of his father's friend, the duke of York; for his constancy had commanded the respect and recovered the favor of his father.

Scarcely had Penn been at liberty a year, when, in 1670, after the intense intolerance of "the conventicle act," he was arraigned for having spoken at a Quaker meeting. From the interpretation of the law by the magistrate, the young man appealed to the jury, reminding them that "they were his judges." "You are Englishmen," said he; "mind your privilege; give not

away your right;" and at last the jury, who had received no refreshments for two days and two nights, on the third day, gave their verdict, "Not guilty."

On the death of his father, inheriting a large fortune, he continued to defend publicly, from the press, the principles of intellectual liberty and moral equality, and remonstrated in unmeasured terms against bigotry and intolerance; and, never fearing openly to address a Quaker meeting, he was soon on the road to Newgate, to suffer for his honesty by a six months' imprisonment. "You are an ingenious gentleman," said the magistrate at the trial; "you have a plentiful estate; why should you render yourself unhappy by associating with such a simple people?" "I prefer," said Penn, "the honestly simple to the ingeniously wicked." The magistrate rejoined by charging Penn with previous immoralities. The young man, with passionate vehemence, vindicated the spotlessness of his life. "I speak this," he adds, "to God's glory, who has ever preserved me from the power of these pollutions, and who, from a child, begot a hatred in me towards them." "Thy words shall be thy burden; I trample thy slander as dirt under my feet."

On his release from imprisonment, a calmer season followed. Penn travelled in Holland and Germany; then, returning to England, he married a woman of extraordinary beauty and sweetness of temper, whose noble spirit "chose him before many suitors," and honored him with "a deep and upright love." As persecution in England was suspended, he enjoyed for two years the delights of rural life, and the animating pursuit of letters; till the storm was renewed, and the imprisonment of George Fox, on his return from America, demanded intercession. Why narrate the severities, which, like a slow poison, brought the prisoner to the borders of the grave? Why enumerate the atrocities of petty tyrants, invested with village magistracies-the ferocious passions of irresponsible jailers? The statute-book of England contains the clearest impress of the bigotry