The Birth Of Pennsylvania
The tendencies of which Quakerism formed only one manifestation
appeared outside of England, in Italy, in France, and especially in
Germany. The fundamental Quaker idea of "quietism," as it was
called, or peaceful, silent contemplation as a spiritual form of
worship and as a development of moral consciousness, was very
widespread at the close of the Reformation and even began to be
practiced in the Roman Catholic Church until it was stopped by the
Jesuits. The most extreme of the English Quakers, however, gave way
to such extravagances of conduct as trembling when they preached
(whence their name), preaching openly in the streets and fields--a
horrible thing at that time--interrupting other congregations, and
appearing naked as a sign and warning. They gave offense by refusing
to remove their hats in public and by applying to all alike the
words "thee" an d "thou," a form of address hitherto used only to
servants and inferiors. Worst of all, the Quakers refused to pay
tithes or taxes to support the Church of England. As a result, the
loathsome jails of the day were soon filled with these objectors,
and their property melted away in fines. This contumacy and their
street meetings, regarded at that time as riotous breaches of the
peace, gave the Government at first a legal excuse to hunt them
down; but as they grew in numbers and influence, laws were enacted
to suppress them. Some of them, though not the wildest extremists,
escaped to the colonies in America. There, however, they were made
welcome to conditions no less severe.
The first law against the Quakers in Massachusetts was passed in
1656, and between that date and 1660 four of the sect were hanged,
one of them a woman, Mary Dyer. Though there were no other hangings,
many Quakers were punished by whipping and banishment. In other
colonies, notably New York, fines and banishment were not uncommon.
Such treatment forced the Quakers, against the will of many of them,
to seek a tract of land and found a colony of their own. To such a
course there appeared no alternative, unless they were determined to
establish their religion solely by martyrdom.
About the time when the Massachusetts laws were enforced, the
principal Quaker leader and organizer, George Fox (1624-1691), began
to consider the possibility of making a settlement among the great
forests and mountains said to lie north of Maryland in the region
drained by the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers. In this region lay
practically the only good land on the Atlantic seaboard not already
occupied. The Puritans and Dutch were on the north, and there were
Catholic and Church of England colonies on the south in Maryland and
Virginia. The middle ground was unoccupied because heretofore a
difficult coast had prevented easy access by sea. Fox consulted
Josiah Coale, a Quaker who had traveled in America and had seen a
good deal of the Indian tribes, with the result that on his second
visit to America Coale was commissioned to treat with the
Susquehanna Indians, who were supposed to have rights in the desired
land. In November, 1660, Coale reported to Fox the result of his
inquiries: "As concerning Friends buying a piece of land of the
Susquehanna Indians I have spoken of it to them and told them what
thou said concerning it; but their answer was, that there is no land
that is habitable or fit for situation beyond Baltimore's liberty
till they come to or near the Susquehanna's Fort."* Nothing could be
done immediately, the letter went on to say, because the Indians
were at war with one another, and William Fuller, a Maryland Quaker,
whose cooperation was deemed essential, was absent.
* James Bowden's "History of the Friends in America," vol. I, p. 389
This seems to have been the first definite movement towards a Quaker
colony. Reports of it reached the ears of young Penn at Oxford and
set his imagination aflame. He never forgot the project, for
seventeen is an age when grand thoughts strike home. The
adventurousness of the plan was irresistible--a home for the new
faith in the primeval forest, far from imprisonment, tithes, and
persecution, and to be won by effort worthy of a man. It was,
however, a dream destined not to be realized for many a long year.
More was needed than the mere consent of the Indians. In the
meantime, however, a temporary refuge for the sect was found in the
province of West Jersey on the Delaware, which two Quakers had
bought from Lord Berkeley for the comparatively small sum of 1000
pounds. Of this grant William Penn became one of the trustees and
thus gained his first experience in the business of colonizing the
region of his youthful dreams. But there was never a sufficient
governmental control of West Jersey to make it an ideal Quaker
colony. What little control the Quakers exercised disappeared after
1702; and the land and situation were not all that could be desired.
Penn, though also one of the owners of East Jersey, made no attempt
to turn that region into a Quaker colony.
Besides West Jersey the Quakers found a temporary asylum in
Aquidneck, now Rhode Island.* For many years the governors and
magistrates were Quakers, and the affairs of this island colony were
largely in their hands. Quakers were also prominent in the politics
of North Carolina, and John Archdale, a Quaker, was Governor for
several years. They formed a considerable element of the population
in the towns of Long Island and Westchester County but they could
not hope to convert these communities into real Quaker
commonwealths.
* This Rhode Island colony should be distinguished from the
settlement at Providence founded by Roger Williams with which it was
later united. See Jones, "The Quakers in the American Colonies," p.
21, note.
The experience in the Jerseys and elsewhere very soon proved that if
there was to be a real Quaker colony, the British Crown must give
not only a title to the land but a strong charter guaranteeing
self-government and protection of the Quaker faith from outside
interference. But that the British Government would grant such
valued privileges to a sect of schismatics which it was hunting down
in England seemed a most unlikely event. Nothing but unusual
influence at Court could bring it about, and in that quarter the
Quakers had no influence.
Penn never forgot the boyhood ideal which he had developed at
college. For twenty years he led a varied life--driven from home and
whipped by his father for consorting with the schismatic; sometimes
in deference to his father's wishes taking his place in the gay
world at Court; even, for a time, becoming a soldier, and again
traveling in France with some of the people of the Court. In the
end, as he grew older, religious feeling completely absorbed him. He
became one of the leading Quaker theologians, and his very earnest
religious writings fill several volumes. He became a preacher at the
meetings and went to prison for his heretical doctrines and
pamphlets. At last he found himself at the age of thirty-six with
his father dead, and a debt due from the Crown of 16,000 pounds for
services which his distinguished father, the admiral, had rendered
the Government.
Here was the accident that brought into being the great Quaker
colony, by a combination of circumstances which could hardly have
happened twice. Young Penn was popular at Court. He had inherited a
valuable friendship with Charles II and his heir, the Duke of York.
This friendship rested on the solid fact that Penn's father, the
admiral, had rendered such signal assistance in restoring Charles
and the whole Stuart line to the throne. But still 16,000 pounds or
$80,000, the accumulation of many deferred payments, was a goodly
sum in those days, and that the Crown would pay it in money, of
which it had none too much, was unlikely. Why not therefore suggest
paying it instead in wild land in America, of which the Crown had
abundance? That was the fruitful thought which visited Penn. Lord
Berkeley and Lord Carteret had been given New Jersey because they
had signally helped to restore the Strait family to the throne. All
the more therefore should the Stuart family give a tract of land,
and even a larger tract, to Penn, whose father had not only assisted
the family to the throne but had refrained so long from pressing his
just claim for money due.
So the Crown, knowing little of the value of it, granted him the
most magnificent domain of mountains; lakes, rivers, and forests,
fertile soil, coal, petroleum, and iron that ever was given to a
single proprietor. In addition to giving Penn the control of
Delaware and, with certain other Quakers, that of New Jersey as
well, the Crown placed at the disposal of the Quakers 55,000 square
miles of most valuable, fertile territory, lacking only about three
thousand square miles of being as large as England and Wales. Even
when cut down to 45,000 square miles by a boundary dispute with
Maryland, it was larger than Ireland. Kings themselves have
possessed such dominions, but never before a private citizen who
scorned all titles and belonged to a hunted sect that exalted peace
and spiritual contemplation above all the wealth and power of the
world. Whether the obtaining of this enormous tract of the best land
in America was due to what may be called the eternal thriftiness of
the Quaker mind or to the intense desire of the British Government
to get rid of these people--at any cost might be hard to determine.
Penn received his charter in 1681, and in it he was very careful to
avoid all the mistakes of the Jersey proprietary grants. Instead of
numerous proprietors, Penn was to be the sole proprietor. Instead of
giving title to the land and remaining silent about the political
government, Penn's charter not only gave him title to the land but a
clearly defined position as its political head, and described the
principles of the government so clearly that there was little room
for doubt or dispute.
It was a decidedly feudal charter, very much like the one granted to
Lord Baltimore fifty years before, and yet at the same time it
secured civil liberty and representative government to the people.
Penn owned all the land and the colonists were to be his tenants. He
was compelled, however, to give his people free government. The laws
were to be made by him with the assent of the people or their
delegates. In practice this of course meant that the people were to
elect a legislature and Penn would have a veto, as we now call it,
on such acts as the legislature should pass. He had power to appoint
magistrates, judges, and some other officers, and to grant pardons.
Though, by the charter, proprietor of the province, he usually
remained in England and appointed a deputy governor to exercise
authority in the colony. In modern phrase, he controlled the
executive part of the government and his people controlled the
legislative part.
Pennsylvania, besides being the largest in area of the proprietary
colonies, was also the most successful, not only from the
proprietor's point of view but also from the point of view of the
inhabitants. The proprietorships in Maine, New Hampshire, New
Jersey, and the Carolinas were largely failures. Maryland was only
partially successful; it was not particularly remunerative to its
owner, and the Crown deprived him of his control of it for twenty
years. Penn, too, was deprived of the control of Pennsylvania by
William III but for only about two years. Except for this brief
interval (1692-1694), Penn and his sons after him held their
province down to the time of the American Revolution in 1776, a
period of ninety-four years.
A feudal proprietorship, collecting rents from all the people, seems
to modern minds grievously wrong in theory, and yet it would be very
difficult to show that it proved onerous in practice. Under it the
people of Pennsylvania flourished in wealth, peace, and happiness.
Penn won undying fame for the liberal principles of his feudal
enterprise. His expenses in England were so great and his quitrents
always so much in arrears that he was seldom out of debt. But his
children grew rich from the province. As in other provinces that
were not feudal there were disputes between the people and the
proprietors; but there was not so much general dissatisfaction as
might have been expected. The proprietors were on the whole not
altogether disliked. In the American Revolution, when the people
could have confiscated everything in Pennsylvania belonging to the
proprietary family, they not only left them in possession of a large
part of their land, but paid them handsomely for the part that was
taken.
After Penn had secured his charter in 1681, he obtained from the
Duke of York the land now included in the State of Delaware. He
advertised for colonists, and began selling land at 100 pounds for
five thousand acres and annually thereafter a shilling quitrent for
every hundred acres. He drew up a constitution or frame of
government, as he called it, after wide and earnest consultation
with many, including the famous Algernon Sydney. Among the Penn
papers in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania is a collection of
about twenty preliminary drafts. Beginning with one which erected a
government by a landed aristocracy, they became more and more
liberal, until in the end his frame was very much like the most
liberal government of the other English colonies in America. He had
a council and an assembly, both elected by the people. The council,
however, was very large, had seventy-two members, and was more like
an upper house of the Legislature than the usual colonial governor's
council. The council also had the sole right of proposing
legislation, and the assembly could merely accept or reject its
proposals. This was a new idea, and it worked so badly in practice
that in the end the province went to the opposite extreme and had no
council or upper house of the Legislature at all.
Penn's frame of government contained, however, a provision for its
own amendment. This was a new idea and proved to be so happy that it
is now found in all American constitutions. His method of
impeachment by which the lower house was to bring in the charge and
the upper house was to try it has also been universally adopted. His
view that an unconstitutional law is void was a step towards our
modern system. The next step, giving the courts power to declare a
law unconstitutional, was not taken until one hundred years after
his time. With the advice and assistance of some of those who were
going out to his colony he prepared a code of laws which contained
many of the advanced ideas of the Quakers. Capital punishment was to
be confined to murder and treason, instead of being applied as in
England to a host of minor offenses. The property of murderers,
instead of being forfeited to the State, was to be divided among the
next of kin of the victim and of the criminal. Religious liberty was
established as it had been in Rhode Island and the Jerseys. All
children were to be taught a useful trade. Oaths in judicial
proceedings were not required. All prisons were to be workhouses and
places of reformation instead of dungeons of dirt, idleness, and
disease. This attempt to improve the prisons inaugurated a movement
of great importance in the modern world in which the part played by
the Quakers is too often forgotten.
Penn had now started his "Holy Experiment," as he called his
enterprise in Pennsylvania, by which he intended to prove that
religious liberty was not only right, but that agriculture,
commerce, and all arts and refinements of life would flourish under
it. He would break the delusion that prosperity and morals were
possible only under some one particular faith established by law.
He, would prove that government could be carried on without war and
without oaths, and that primitive Christianity could be maintained
without a hireling ministry, without persecution, without ridiculous
dogmas or ritual, sustained only by its own innate power and the
inward light.
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