forth for a hundred years the government of Pennsylvania was practically unicameral.

Pennsylva

Delaware.

Along with such questions there were disagreements between the "province" and the "territories," or between Pennsylvania nia and and Delaware, which resulted permanently in separate legislatures for the two. There were also troubles between Quakers and nonQuakers, especially the members of the Church of England. Some increment of confusion and bitterness came from Keith's apostasy. Meanwhile the quit-rents failed to be collected, and each dissatisfied party was inclined to accuse its antagonists of surreptitious dealings with the ubiquitous pirates.

Penn approached the situation in a most amiable spirit."Friends," said he, "if in the constitution by charter there be anything that jars, alter it." The revised charter of 1701 comprised The revised but nine articles. The first grants liberty charter. of conscience to all who "confess and acknowledge Almighty God," which, on a strict interpretation, would have admitted Mussulmans and Jews, and would have excluded such persons as Denis Diderot or the late Mr. Bradlaugh. At the same time, the right to hold executive or legislative offices was restricted to persons "who profess to believe in Jesus Christ," a provision which ought hardly to have barred out Unitarians, but was sometimes used for that purpose.

The second article "requires an assembly to be chosen yearly by the freemen, to consist of four persons or more from each county. This assembly

has full powers to choose its officers, to judge of the qualifications of its own members, to adjourn itself, to prepare bills and make laws, impeach criminals and redress grievances, with all other powers and privileges of an assembly, according to the rights of free-born subjects of England.'

6

"The third requires the freemen to elect two or three people for each position of sheriff or coroner or other court officers, and the governor to choose among them; or, if the governor fails to select, the first named shall serve.

"The fourth declares that all laws shall be issued in the form, By the Governor, with the consent and approbation of the freemen in General Assembly met.'

"The fifth allows all criminals to have the same privileges of witnesses and counsel as their prose

cutors.

"The sixth requires that all cases concerning property shall be decided by courts of justice, and not by governor and council.

"The seventh prevents any one receiving a tavern license who is not recommended by the justices, and allows the justices to suppress a disorderly public house.

"The eighth prevents the forfeiture of the estates of suicides or intestates; prohibits any law contrary to this charter without the consent of the governor and six sevenths of the assembly; and pledges the Proprietor to observe inviolably the first article concerning liberty of conscience.

66

Lastly, the Proprietor binds himself and heirs not to destroy the liberties of the charter, and

declares such actions, if attempted, to be of no force or effect." 1

Divergence

in policy be

tween Penn

and William

III.

Scarcely had this charter begun to go into operation when Penn felt it necessary to return once more to England. There was always a more or less powerful opposition to his lord-proprietorship, and he felt that he must be near the throne in order to protect his interests and ensure the success of the holy experiment. The accession of Queen Anne, in 1701, was in many ways favourable to Penn. The late king, who could admire him for his fearlessness and his breadth of view, was never fully in sympathy with him. Something like a gulf divided the preacher of universal peace and brotherly love from the warlike king to whose lot it had fallen to defeat a most formidable conspiracy for depriving human civilization of all that it had gained since the days of Wyclif. Louis XIV. was the great champion of ideas and methods which would have made Europe no better than Cathay, of the spirit of civil and religious despotism, — the accursed thing which Voltaire afterward stigmatized as "The Infamous." The policy of L'Infame was one of blood and iron, and with blood and iron the mighty Dutchman must oppose it. Thus William of Orange was beset by a chronic temptation to interfere with the holy experiment. In 1701 he asked Pennsylvania to contribute £350 toward erecting fortifications upon the northern frontier of New York, and thus a serious question was raised. Could a

1 Sharpless, A Quaker Experiment in Government, pp. 64--66.

Quaker legislature properly vote money for military purposes? Different opinions were expressed.

Could Quakers fight in self-defence?

Some worthy Friends, who abhorred warfare as much as any, nevertheless did not feel bound to sit still and let the enemy cut their throats. Others deemed it right to adhere to their principles and trust in Providence for the result. So for four days "there was an unpleasant parley," which ended in a postponement of the vote, while sundry resolutions were adopted, vague and ambiguous enough for any modern political platform. Warned by such symptoms, Penn was careful to leave in the province deputy-governors who were not averse to fighting in self-defence.

Penn's

England.

In the Christmas time of 1701, Penn arrived once more in England; before Easter return to the great king had passed away, and by Whitsuntide the gigantic war of the Spanish Succession had begun. Queen Anne was inclined to befriend Penn for her father's sake, and there was no further serious risk of his losing his province. Of his military deputies, however, one contrived, through excess of zeal, to make much trouble. The appointment of this man, John Evans, was one of a number of instances which seem to show that Penn was liable to err in his judgments of character. He was governor, apt to be too generous in his estimates John Evans. of men. Evans was a youth of five-andtwenty or so, with some scholar-like traits which attracted Penn's admiration, but he soon showed himself unworthy of trust. There was not much

The deputy

His folly.

danger of an attack upon the little Quaker commonwealth on the Delaware River; that community did not extend westward enough, nor did the French-Algonquin conflagration, against which New York and New England were fighting, as yet extend westward enough; the Five Nations, an insuperable barrier, stood between. But Evans, who was not a Quaker, believed in going forth to smite the hosts of Amalek, and to help the cause of England wherever it was imperilled. His call for troops met with no response, whereupon he resorted to an almost incredibly shameful and puerile trick. On a bright spring day in 1706, while the good people of Philadelphia were holding their annual fair, a courier came spurring into the town with consternation depicted upon his face, and announced that a dozen French warships were coming up the river. The governor straightway sprang upon his horse and cantered about the streets, waving a drawn sword and calling people to arms. At this sudden alarm, which was simply a brazen falsehood, some people threw their silver spoons and goblets into their wells for hiding, some ran out to the woods, some crowded into boats and hurried up the river, a few poor women were frightened into miscarriage; but the scare was soon over, and the silly Evans became an object of scorn.1 The failure of

1 It is of course this false alarm to which one of the old settlers, Thomas Makin, alludes in his Descriptio Pennsylvania, 1729, dedicated to James Logan:

Sed semel hæc rumor mendax clamavit ad arma,

Incola cui nimium credulus omnis erat.