1684.]

TRIAL FOR WITCHCRAFT.

53

case of good behavior, could not be removed by the proprietary during the term for which they were commissioned. In Maryland, the council was named by Lord Baltimore; in Pennsylvania, by the people. In Maryland, the power of appointing magistrates, and all, even the subordinate, executive officers, rested solely with the proprietary; in Pennsylvania, William Penn could not appoint a justice or a constable; every executive officer, except the highest, was elected by the people or their representatives.

In the name of all the freemen of the province, the charter was received by the assembly with gratitude, as one "of more than expected liberty." "I desired," says Penn, "to show men as free and as happy as they can be."

It remained to dislodge superstition from its hidingplaces in the mind. The Scandinavian emigrants came from their native forests with imaginations clouded by the gloomy terrors of an invisible world of fiends; and, in February, 1684, a turbulent woman was brought to trial as a witch. Penn presided, and the Quakers on the jury outnumbered the Swedes. The grounds of the accusation were canvassed, the witnesses calmly examined; and the jury, having listened to the charge from the governor, returned this verdict: "The prisoner is guilty of the common fame of being a witch, but not guilty as she stands indicted." The friends of the liberated prisoner were required to give bonds, that she should keep the peace; and in Penn's domain, from that day to this, neither demon nor hag ever rode through the air on goat or broomstick; and the blackest arts of conjuration went no farther than to foretell fortunes, mutter spells over quack medicines, or discover by the divining rod the hidden treasures of the buccaneers.

Meantime the news spread abroad, that William Penn, the Quaker, had opened "an asylum to the good and the oppressed of every nation;" and humanity went through Europe, gathering the children of misfortune. From England and Wales, from Scotland and Ireland, and the

Low Countries, emigrants crowded to the land of promise. On the banks of the Rhine, it was whispered that the plans of Gustavus Adolphus and Oxenstiern were consummated; new companies were formed under better auspices than those of the Swedes; and from the highlands above Worms, the humble people who had melted at the eloquence of Penn, the Quaker emissary, renounced their German homes for the protection of the Quaker king. There is nothing in the history of the human race like the confidence which the simple virtues and institutions of William Penn inspired. The progress of his province was more rapid than the progress of New England. In August, 1683, "Philadelphia consisted of three or four little cottages;" the conies were yet undisturbed in their hereditary burrows; the deer fearlessly bounded past blazed trees, unconscious of foreboded streets; the stranger that wandered from the river bank was lost in the thickets of the interminable forest; and, two years afterwards, the place contained about six hundred houses, and the schoolmaster and the printing-press had begun their work. In three years from its foundation, Philadelphia gained more than New York had done in half a century. This was the happiest season in the public life of William Penn. "I must, without vanity, say," - such was his honest exultation "I have led the greatest colony into America that ever any man did upon a private credit; and the most prosperous beginnings that ever were in it, are to be found among us.'

in 1684,

The government had been organized, peace with the natives confirmed, the fundamental law established, the courts of justice instituted; the mission of William Penn was accomplished; and now, like Solon, the most humane of ancient legislators, he prepared to leave the commonwealth of which he had founded the happiness. Intrusting the great seal to his friend Lloyd, and the executive power to a committee of the council, in August, 1684, Penn sailed for England, leaving freedom to its

MASON AND DIXON'S LINE PENN'S BOUNDARY. 55

own development. His departure was happy for the colony and for his own tranquillity. He had established a democracy, and was himself a feudal 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. And after he reached England, he assured the eager 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 plantations; and, after many hearings, it was decided, in 1685, that the tract of Delaware did not constitute a part of Maryland. The proper boundaries of the territory remained to be settled; and the present limits of Delaware were established by a compromise. There is no reason to suppose any undue bias on the minds of the committee; 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.

Meanwhile the Quaker legislators in the woods of Pennsylvania were serving their novitiate in popular legislation. The assembly originated bills without scruple; they attempted a new organization of the judiciary; they alarmed the merchants by their lenity towards debtors; they would vote no taxes; they claimed the right of inspecting the records, and displacing the officers of the courts; they expelled a member who reminded them of their contravening the provisions of their charter. The executive power was also imperfectly administered; for the whole council was too numerous a body for its regular exercise. A commission of five was substituted; and finally, when, in 1688, it was resolved to appoint a deputy-governor, the choice of the proprietary was not wisely made. In a word, folly and passion, not less than justice and wisdom, had become enfranchised on the Delaware, and were desperately bent on the exercise of their privileges. Free scope was opened to every whim that enthusiasts might propose as oracles from the skies, to every selfish desire that could lurk under the Quaker garb. But the smiling light of prosperity rose serenely over the little clouds of discontent, and the swelling passions of the young apprentices at legislation died away at the adjournments. To freedom and justice a fair field was given, and they were safe.

The white man agreed with the red man to love one another. Would he love the negro also, and refuse homage from the African? William Penn employed blacks without scruple. His first public act relating to them did but substitute, after fourteen years' service, the severe condition of adscripts to the soil, for that of slaves. At a later day, he endeavored to secure to the African mental and moral culture, the rights and happiness of domestic life. His efforts were not successful, and he himself died a slaveholder. On the subject of negro slavery, the German mind was least inthralled by prejudice, because Germany had never yet participated in the slave trade. The Swedish and German colony of Gustavus Adolphus was designed to rest on free labor. If

1674.]

ATTEMPTS AT CONSOLIDATION.

57

the general meeting of the Quakers for a season forbore a positive judgment, already "the poor hearts" from Kirchheim," the little handful" of German Friends from the highlands above the Rhine, came to the resolution that it was not lawful for Christians to buy or to keep negro slaves.

This decision of the German emigrants on negro slavery, was taken during the lifetime of George Fox, who recognized no distinction of race. "Let your light shine among the Indians, the blacks, and the whites," was his message to Quakers on the Delaware. His heart was with the settlements of which he had been the pioneer; and, a few weeks before his death, he exhorted Friends in America to be the light of the world, the salt to preserve earth from corruption.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE FIVE NATIONS.

THE Country which, after the reconquest of the New Netherlands, was, in June, 1674, again conveyed to the duke of York, included the New England frontier from the Kennebec to the St. Croix, extended continuously to Connecticut River, and was bounded on the south by Maryland. We have now to trace an attempt to consolidate the whole coast north of the Delaware.

The charter from the king sanctioned whatever ordinances the duke of York or his assigns might establish; and, in regard to justice, revenue, and legislation, Edmund Andros, the governor, was left responsible only to his own conscience and his employer. He was instructed to display all the humanity and gentleness that could consist with arbitrary power, and to use punishments, not from wilful cruelty, but as an instrument of ter