William Penn

he was thereby losing sixteen thousand pounds, but in his refusal to make his new estates a means of gain. "He is offered

wn particular gain." "I would not abuse His love," said Penn, "nor act unworthy of His providence, and so defile what came to me clean. No, let the Lord

Penn in Buckinghamshire, the highest land in England-[the king] called this Pennsylvania, which is the high or head woodlands; for I proposed, when the secretary, a Welshman, refused to have it called New Wales, Sylvania, and they added Penn to it; and though I much opposed it, and went to the king to have

had the right to assess custom on goods laden and unladen, for his own benefit; though he was to take care to do it "reasonably," and with the advice of the assembly of freemen. He was, at the same time, to be free from any tax or custom of the king, except by his own consent, or by the consent of his governor or assembly

ment, and to the task of composing it Penn gave a great amount of time and care. It

ith this small distinction, and it belongs to all three: any government is free to the people under it, whatever be the frame, where the laws rule, and the people are a party to those laws." His purpose, he says, is to establish "the great end of all government, viz., to support

ronouncements. "For the matters of liberty and privilege," he wrote, "I propose that which is extraordinary, and to leave myself and successors no power of doin

faith and workings, I do, for me and mine, declare and establish for the first fundamental of the government of my province, that every person that doth and shall reside there shall hav

ony and almost every other government then existing. In their influence and continuance, until at last they were incorporated

e with ama

freedom tramme

icles to the number of twenty-four,

a third for one; so that by the end of the service of the first third, all would have a three-year term, twenty-four going out and having their places filled each year. The business of the council was to prepare laws, to see that they were executed, and in general to provide fo

nt any religious place or ministry whatever." All children of the age of twelve were to be taught some useful trade. All pleadings, processes, and records in the courts of law were to be as short as possible. The reformation of the offender was to be considered as a great part of the purpose of punishment. At a time when there were in Eng

er and the lower house was so great as to cause much just dissatisfaction. The council was in effect a body of seventy-two governors; the assembly,

appeared for the first time in Penn's Frame of Government. Another good quality of the Constitution was that it secured an abiding harmony between its fundamental statements and all furth

is an application of the Quaker principles of democracy and of religious liberty to the conditions of a commonwealth. From beginning to end it is the work of a man whose supreme interest was religion. It is at the same time sin

you of my love, and to desire you to love my friends; and when the great God brings me among you, I intend to order all things in such a manner that we may all live in love and peace, one with another, which I hope th

leave one acre of trees, for every five acres cleared. All transactions with the Indians were to be held in the public market, and all differences between the white man and the red were to be settled by a jury of six planters and s

They had six meeting-houses; the English settlers being Quakers. They lived along the banks of the Delaware. In the autumn of 1681, the s

o you good in this world and forever." "Be diligent," he advised his wife, "in meetings for worship and business, ... and let meetings be kept once a day in the family to wait upon the Lord, ... and, my dearest, to make thy family matters easy to thee, divide thy time and be regular; it is easy and sweet.... Cast up thy income, and see what it daily amounts to, ... and I beseech thee to live low and sparingly, till my debts are paid." As for the children, they are to be bred up "in the love of virtue, and that holy plain way of it, which we have lived in, that the world in no part of it get into my family." They are to be carefully taught. "For their learning be liberal, spare no cost." "Agriculture is

gett inherited the devout spirit of his parents; his father wrote an affecting account of his pious death. Of the two remaining, Willia

before Newcastle, in Delaware; on the 28th, he landed. Here he formally received turf and twig, water and soil, in token of his ownership. On the 29th, he entered Pennsylvania. Adding ten days to this date, to

hite kind of muskadel," out of which he hopes it may be possible to make good wine. The ground was fertile. The Indians he found to be tall, straight, and well built, walking "with a lofty chin." Their language was "like the Hebrew," and he guessed that they were descende

h my place and portion. O how sweet is the quiet of these parts, freed from the a

, at a place which the Indians called Coaquannoc, he established his capital city, calling it Philadelphia,-perhaps in token of the spirit of brotherly love

minutes of a Friends' meeting held on the 8th (18th) of November, 1682, at Shackamaxon, now Kensington, it was recorded that, "at this time, Governor Penn and a multitude of Friends arrived here, and erected a city called Philadelphia, about half a mile from S

n in order, in the plain Quaker fashion which had thus entitled the days of the week and the months of the year. Eight were to lie parallel with High, and to be called after the trees of the forest,-Spruce, Chestnut, Pine. In the midst of the city, at the crossing of High and Broad Streets, was to be a square of ten acres, to contain the public offices; and in each quarter of the city was to be a similar open space for walks. The founder intended to allow no house

eet south of the present Market Street," and still preserved in Fairmont Park. He afterw

veral such meetings between the Quakers and the Indians, it is difficult to fix a date to mark the fact. One meeting took place, it is said, under a spreading elm at Shackamaxon. The commonly accepted date is the 23d of June, 1683. The elm was blown down in 1810

's name, and Penn answers. "When the purchase was agreed great promises passed between us of kindness and good neighbourhood, and that the English and the Indians must live in love as long as the sun gave light, ... at every sentence of which they shouted, and said Amen, in their way." Some earnestness may have been a

st of the long story of the misdealings of the white men with the red, which begins with Cortez and Pizarro, and is still continued in the daily newspapers, this justice and honesty of William Penn is a point of light. That Penn treated the Indians as neighbors and brothers; that he paid them fairly for every acre of their la

in three days." William walked out a day and a half of it, taking several chiefs with him, "leisurely, after the Indian manner, sitting down sometimes to smoke their pipes, to eat biscuit and cheese,

e meant, and that what he promised he would fulfill faithfully. Thus the planters were freed from the terror of the forest which haunted their neighbors, north and south. They could found cities in th

.... I think we have near about eighty houses built, and about three hundred farms settled round the town.... We have had fifty sail of ships and small vessels, since the last summer, in our river, which shows a good beginning." "I am mightily taken with this part of the world," he wrote to Lord Culpeper, who had come to

hich was claimed by Penn, including even Philadelphia. The two proprietors had already discussed the question without settlement; indeed, it remained a cause of contention for some seventy years. As finally settled, in 1732, between the heirs of Penn and of Baltimore, a line was established from Cape Henlopen west to a point half way between De

lowing him as fast as I can," he wrote to the Duke of York, praying "that a perfect stop be put to all his proceedings till I come." He therefore took leave of h

eserve thee from such as would abuse and defile thee! O that thou mayest be kept from the evil that would overwhelm thee; that faithful to the God of mercies in the life of righteousness, thou mayest be preserved to the end. My soul prays to God for thee that thou mayest s