CHARTER OF PENNSYLVANIA.

113

adoption of his former belief. His father, disappointed in his hopes of worldly advancement for his son, abandoned him to his own course.

He then commenced preacher, and gained many proselytes. Though often imprisoned, and constantly persecuted, he still persevered; and such was his sincerity, zeal and patience, that his father finally became reconciled to him. In 1670, he was tried at the Old Bailey, for preaching in the street, and pleaded his own cause with such firmness and resolution that he gained his acquittal.

On the death of his father he became heir to a handsome estate, but he continued to preach, write, and suffer persecution as before.

The attention of Penn was attracted to colonisation, by the interest which he took in the affairs of New Jersey. Learning that a large tract of land, lying between the possessions of the Duke of York and those of Lord Baltimore, was still unoccupied, he formed the noble design of founding there a new state, in which the liberal ideas he had formed of civil and religious liberty should be fully realised. He accordingly presented a petition to Charles II., urging his claim for a debt incurred by the crown to his father, and soliciting a grant of the land on which he desired to settle. A charter was readily granted by the king.

This charter constituted William Penn, and his heirs, true and absolute proprietaries of the province of Pennsylvania, saving to the crown their allegiance, and the sovereignty. It gave him and his heirs, and their deputies, power to make laws, with the advice of the freemen, and to erect courts of justice, for the execution of those laws, provided they should not be repugnant to the laws of England.

Penn now invited purchasers; and a large number, chiefly of his own persuasion, prepared to emigrate. Some merchants, forming a company, purchased 20,000 acres of land at the rate of twenty pounds for every thousand acres. In May, 1681, he despatched Markham, his relative, with a company of emigrants, to take possession of the territory. He at the same time despatched a letter to the Indians, assuring them of his just and friendly intentions with respect to themselves.

In the following April, Penn published 'the frame of government for Pennsylvania,' and in May, a body of laws which had been agreed upon by himself, and the adventurers in England, which was intended as a great charter, and which,

114

LANDING OF WILLIAM PENN.

says Chalmers, 'does great honour to their wisdom as statesmen, to their morals as men, to their spirit as colonists.'

To prevent future claims to the province by the Duke of York, or his heirs, Penn obtained from him, his deed of release for it; and as an additional grant, he procured from him also, his right and interest in that tract of land, which was at first called the 'Territories of Pennsylvania,' and afterwards, the 'Three Lower Counties on Delaware.' This constitutes, as we have already remarked, the present state of Delaware.

Penn, having completed these arrangements, embarked in August, for America, accompanied by a large number of emigrants, chiefly of his own religious persuasion. He landed at Newcastle, on the 24th of October 1682. The next day the people were summoned to the court house, possession of the country was legally given to the proprietary; and the people were acquainted by him, with the design of his coming, and the nature of the government which he came to establish.

He then proceeded to Upland, now called Chester, and there called an assembly on the 24th of December. This assembly passed an act of union, annexing the Three Lower Counties to the province, and an act of settlement in reference to the frame of government. The foreigners, residing in the province, were naturalised, and the laws, agreed on in England, were passed in form. Penn then selected the site of an extensive city, to which he gave the name of Philadelphia, and laid out the plan on which it should be built. Before the end of the year, it contained eighty dwellings.

Penn's next step was, to enter into a treaty with the Indian tribes in his neighbourhood. Regarding them as the rightful possessors of the soil, he fairly purchased from them their lands, giving in exchange valuable European goods and commodities, such as were useful to them. This treaty executed without the formality of an oath, was inviolably preserved for a period of seventy years.

Within a year, between twenty and thirty vessels, with passengers, arrived in the province. The banks of the Delaware were rapidly settled, from the falls of Trenton, to Chester. The emigrants were chiefly Quakers from England, Wales and Ireland. A party from Germany settled in and near Germantown, in 1682. On landing, they set about procuring shelter. Some lodged in the woods under trees, some in caves which were easily dug on the high banks of the Wis

PENNSYLVANIA UNDER WILLIAM AND MARY.

115

sahiccon and the Delaware, and others in hastily built huts. They were abundantly supplied with wood, water, and fertile land; and they brought with them the implements for building and husbandry. They soon formed plantations of Indian corn and wheat. The forests furnished deer, wild turkeys and pigeons; and the rivers abounded with fish. The settlers endured some hardships, it is true, but they were in a rich country, and their knowledge of its resources, and the thought of the free institutions which they might transmit to their posterity, enabled them to conquer all difficulties.

A second assembly was held at Philadelphia, in March, 1683. During this session, Penn created a second frame of government, differing in some points from the former, to which the assembly readily granted assent. They also enacted a variety of salutary regulations, by which the growing prosperity of the province was promoted, and its peace and order preserved. Within four years from the date of the grant to Penn, the province contained twenty settlements, and Philadelphia 2,000 inhabitants.

Having received information from his agent that his presence was required in England, Penn departed from America in August, 1684, leaving the province under the government of five commissioners, chosen from the provincial council. Soon after his return, James II. ascended the throne. Penn's attachment to the Stuart family induced him to adhere to this unfortunate monarch till long after his fall; and for two years after the revolution which placed William and Mary on the throne, the province was administered in the name of James. This could not fail to draw down the indignation of king William on the devoted head of the proprietary, who suffered much persecution for his unflinching loyalty. He was four times imprisoned. The king took the government of Pennsylvania into his own hands; and appointed Colonel Fletcher to administer the government of this province, as well as that of New York. It, at length, became apparent to the king, that Penn's attachment to the Stuarts was merely personal, and not attended with any treasonable designs; and he was restored to favour. Being permitted to resume and exercise his rights, he appointed William Markham to be his deputy governor.

In 1696, the assembly complained to Governor Markham of a breach of their chartered privileges; and, in consequence of their remonstrance, a bill of settlement, prepared and

116

DEATH OF WILLIAM PENN.

passed by the assembly, was approved by the governor, forming the third frame of government of Pennsylvania.

In 1699, Penn again visited the colony, accompanied by his family, with the design of spending the remainder of his life among his people. He was disappointed, however, by finding the colonists dissatisfied with the existing state of things. Negro slavery, and the intercourse with the Indian tribes, those prolific sources of disquiet in all periods of our history, were the subjects of much unpleasant altercation between the proprietary and the colonists. Certain laws, which he prepared for regulating these affairs, were rejected by the assembly. His exertions, in recommending a liberal system to his own sect, were attended with better success, and the final abolition of slavery, in Pennsylvania, was ultimately owing to their powerful influence.

Penn soon determined to return to England, and he naturally desired to have some frame of government firmly established before his departure. In 1701, he prepared one which was readily accepted by the assembly. It gave them the right of originating laws, which had previously been vested in the governor: it allowed to the governor a negative on bills passed by the assembly, together with the right of appointing his own council, and of exercising the whole executive power. This new charter the Three Lower Counties refused to accept; and they were consequently separated from Pennsylvania; electing an assembly of their own, but acknowledging the same governor.

Immediately after the acceptance of his fourth charter, Penn returned to England. Here he was harassed by complaints against the administration of his deputy governor, Evans, whom he finally displaced, appointing Charles Gookin in his place. Finding the discontents were still not allayed, Penn, now in his sixty-sixth year, addressed the assembly for the last time, in a letter, which marks the mild dignity and wisdom of his character and the affectionate concern which he felt for the future welfare of the province. This letter is said to have produced a powerful effect; but before this could be known to the illustrious founder, he had been seized with the disease which terminated his active and useful life. By the universal consent of historians and statesmen, Penn has been placed in the very highest rank among the benefactors and moral reformers of mankind. The influence of his character has never ceased to be felt

FRANKLIN'S MISSION TO LONDON.

117

in the institutions of the state which he founded; and his memory will be cherished by a grateful people to the remotest ages.

The legislatures and governors of Pennsylvania, acting on the principles of their founder, acquired by equitable purchases from the Indians a most extensive and unembarrassed territory, which was rapidly filled with settlers. The only subject of disquiet in the colony, for many years, was a dispute between the governors and assembly, on the question of exempting lands of the proprietary from general taxation, a claim which the people resisted as unjust. After many disputes on this subject, the assembly deputed the celebrated Benjamin Franklin, as an agent to London, to petition the king for redress. The subject was brought before the privy council, and finally adjusted by a compromise; Franklin, as agent, entering into engagements that the taxes should be assessed in a fair and equitable manner; and the governor assenting to the bill for levying them.

After the commencement of the revolutionary war, a new constitution was adopted by the people, which excluded the proprietor from all share in the government. His claim to quit-rents was afterwards purchased for 570,000 dollars.

Pennsylvania, which, excepting Georgia, was the last of the colonies settled, had a more rapid increase than any of her competitors in wealth and population. In 1775, she possessed a population of 372,208 inhabitants, collected and raised in less than a century.

CHAPTER XVIII.

COLONISATION OF NORTH CAROLINA.

THE unsuccessful attempts of the French, under admiral Coligny, to form permanent settlements on the coast of Carolina, have already been noticed. Those which were made under Elizabeth, by Raleigh and Gilbert, have been comprised in the history of Virginia, of which colony Carolina was then considered a part. But for the removal of the settlers into Virginia, Carolina would have been the first permanent English colony in America.