1681.]

PENNSYLVANIA GRANTED TO PENN.

45

which a national church could foster, and a parliament

avow.

After travelling through Germany to explain the universal principle to princes and peasants, after earnest appeals in behalf of the rights of conscience to the English government and the English people, when every hope of reform from parliament vanished, and bigotry and tyranny prevailed more than ever,-Penn, despairing of relief in Europe, bent the whole energy of his mind to accomplish the establishment of a free government in the New World. His father, distinguished in English history by the conquest of Jamaica, and by his conduct, discretion, and courage, in the signal battle against the Dutch in 1665, had bequeathed to him a claim on the government for sixteen thousand pounds. To the prodigal Charles II., always embarrassed for money, the grant of a province seemed the easiest mode of cancelling the debt. By the aid of powerful friends, and the assured favor of the duke of York, William Penn obtained a charter for the territory, which received from the king the name of Pennsylvania, and which was to include three degrees of latitude by five degrees of longitude west from the Delaware. To avoid encroaching on the three lower counties, that is, the state of Delaware, Pennsylvania was, in that direction, limited by a circle drawn at twelve miles' distance from Newcastle, northward and westward, unto the beginning of the fortieth degree of latitude. This impossible boundary received the assent of the agents of the duke of York and Lord Baltimore.

The charter, as originally drawn up by William Penn himself, conceded powers of government analogous to those of the charter for Maryland. That no clause might be at variance with English law, it was revised by the attorney-general, and amended by Lord North, who inserted clauses to guard the sovereignty of the king, and even to reserve to parliament the power of levying customs.

In March, 1681, the patent, wrote William Penn, was

confirmed "under the great seal of England. God will bless and make the country the seed of a nation."

The royal mandate announced to all the inhabitants of the province, whether Swedes, Dutch, or English, that William Penn, their absolute proprietary, was invested with all powers and preeminences necessary for the government. The proprietary also issued his proclamation to his vassals and subjects. It was in the following words:-"My Friends: I wish you all happiness here and hereafter. These are to let you know, that it hath pleased God in his providence to cast you within my lot and care. It is a business, that though I never undertook before, yet God has given me an understanding of my duty, and an honest mind to do it uprightly. You shall be governed by laws of your own making, and live a free, and, if you will, a sober and industrious people. I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress his person. God has furnished me with a better resolution, and has given me his grace to keep it."

With this letter to the inhabitants, young Markham, in May, 1681, sailed as agent of the proprietary. During the summer, the conditions for the sale of lands were reciprocally ratified by Penn and a company of adventurers. In August, a company of traders offered six thousand pounds and an annual revenue for a monopoly of the Indian traffic between the Delaware and the Susquehannah. To a father of a family, in straitened circumstances, the temptation was great; but Penn was bound, by his religion, to equal laws, and he rebuked the cupidity of monopoly. "I will not abuse the love of God," - such was his decision, "nor act unworthy of his providence, by defiling what came to me clean. No; let the Lord guide me by his wisdom, to honor his name, and serve his truth and people, that an example and a standard may be set up to the nations; and he adds to a Friend, "There may be room there, though not here, for the Holy Experiment."

Meantime, the mind of Penn was deeply agitated by

WILLIAM PENN SAILS FOR THE DELAWARE.

47

thoughts on the government which he should establish. "I purpose," such was his prompt decision, "for the matters of liberty I purpose, that which is extraordinary to leave myself and successors no power of doing mischief; that the will of one man may not hinder the good of a whole country;" and, guided by the suavity and humanity of his Quaker brethren, in May, 1682, Penn published a frame of government, to be referred to the free men in Pennsylvania for their approval.

The government and commercial prosperity of the colony were founded in freedom; to perfect his territory, Penn desired to possess the bay, the river, and the shore of the Delaware to the ocean. The territories or three lower counties, now forming the state of Delaware, were in possession of the duke of York, and, from the conquest of New Netherlands, had been esteemed an appendage to his province. His claim, arising from conquest and possession, had the informal assent of the king and the privy council, and had extended even to the upper Swedish settlements. It was not difficult to obtain from the duke a release of his claim on Pennsylvania; and, after much negotiation, the lower province was granted by two deeds of feoff

ment.

Every arrangement for a voyage to his province being finished, Penn took leave of his family. Friends in England watched his departure with anxious hope; and their farewell at parting was given with "the innocence and tenderness of the child that has no guile."

After a long passage, rendered gloomy by frequent death among the passengers, many of whom had in England been his immediate neighbors, on the twenty-seventh day of October, 1682, William Penn landed at Newcastle. He landed full of hope.

Believing that God is in every conscience, his light in every soul, he was resolved to build such are his own words—" a free colony for all mankind." This is the

praise of William Penn, that, in an age which had seen a popular revolution shipwreck popular liberty among selfish factions, which had seen Hugh Peters and Henry Vane perish by the hangman's cord and the axe, — he did not despair of humanity; and, though all history and experience denied the sovereignty of the people, dared to cherish the noble idea of man's capacity for self-government. Conscious that there was no room for its exercise in England, the pure enthusiast-like Calvin and Descartes, a voluntary exile-was come to the banks of the Delaware to institute "THE HOLY EXPERIMENT.”

The news spread rapidly, that the Quaker king was at Newcastle; and, on the day after his landing, in presence of a crowd of Swedes, and Dutch, and English, who had gathered round the court-house, his deeds of feoffment were produced; the duke of York's agent surrendered the territory by the solemn delivery of earth and water, and Penn, invested with supreme and undefined power in Delaware, addressed the assembled multitude on government, recommended sobriety and peace, and pledged himself to grant liberty of conscience and civil freedom.

From Newcastle Penn ascended the Delaware to Chester, where he was hospitably received by the honest, kind-hearted emigrants who had preceded him from the north of England; the little village of herdsmen and farmers, with their plain manners, gentle dispositions, and tranquil passions, seemed a harbinger of a golden age.

From Chester tradition describes the journey of Penn to have been continued with a few friends in an open boat, in the earliest days of November, to the beautiful bank, fringed with pine-trees, on which the city of Philadelphia was soon to rise.

In the following weeks, Penn visited West and East New Jersey, New York, the metropolis of his neighbor proprietary, the duke of York, and, after meeting Friends on Long Island, he returned to the banks of the Delaware.

THE GREAT TREATY WITH THE LENNI LENAPE. 49

To the year 1682 belongs his first grand treaty with the Indians. Beneath a large elm-tree at Shakamaxon, on the northern edge of Philadelphia, William Penn, surrounded by a few Friends, in the habiliments of peace, met the numerous delegation of the Lenni Lenape tribes. The great treaty was not for the purchase of lands; but, under the shelter of the forest, now leafless by the frosts of autumn, Penn proclaimed to the men of the Algonquin race, from both banks of the Delaware, from the borders of the Schuylkill, and, it may have been, even from the Susquehannah, the equal rights of humanity. "We meet" 66 - such were his words on the broad pathway of good faith and good will; no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love. I will not call you children; for parents sometimes chide their children too severely; nor brothers only, for brothers differ. The friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain; for that the rains might rust, or the falling tree might break. We are the same as if one man's body were to be divided into two parts; we are all one flesh and blood."

The children of the forest were touched by the sacred doctrine, and renounced their guile and their revenge. They received the presents of Penn in sincerity; and with hearty friendship they gave the belt of wampum. "We will live," said they, "in love with William Penn and his children, as long as the moon and the sun shall endure."

This treaty of peace and friendship was made under the open sky, by the side of the Delaware, with the sun, and the river, and the forest, for witnesses. It was not confirmed by an oath; it was not ratified by signatures and seals; no written record of the conference can be found; and its terms and conditions had no abiding monument but on the heart. There they were written like the law of God, and were never forgotten. The simple sons of the wilderness, returning to their wig wams, kept the history of the covenant by strings of