lute fee; and with a liberality unparalleled in that age, he united a general recognition of Christianity as the established faith of the land, with an exclusion of the political predominance or superiority of any one particular sect or denomination of Christians. This wise administration soon converted a desolate wilderness into a flourishing commonwealth', enlivened by industry and adorned by civilization. It is a proof at once of the success of his policy, and of the prosperity and happiness of the colonists, that, a very few years after the first occupation of the province, they granted to their proprietary a large subsidy of tobacco, in grateful acknowledgment of his liberality and beneficence. Similar tributes continued, from time to time, to attest the merit of the proprietary', and the attachment of the people. . . .

8. In the Assembly a magnanimous attempt was made to preserve the peace of the colony, by extinguishing within its limits one of the most fertile sources of human strife and animosity. It had been proclaimed from the very beginning by the proprietary that religious toleration should constitute one of the fundamental" principles of the social union over which he presided; and the Assembly of the province, composed chiefly of Roman Catholics, now proceeded, by a memorable Act concerning Religion, to interweave this noble principle into its legislative constitutions (1649).

9. The statute commenced with a preamble', declaring that the enforcement of the conscience had been of dangerous consequence in those countries wherein it had been practiced; and ordained that, thereafter no persons professing to believe in Jesus Christ should be molested on account of their faith, or denied the free exercise of their particular modes of worship; that persons molesting any individual, on account of his religious tenets or ecclesiastical' practices, should pay treble damages to the party aggrieved, and twenty shillings to the proprietary; that those who should reproach their neighbors with opprobrious" names or epithets', inferring religious distinctions, should forfeit ten shillings to the persons so insulted; that any one speaking reproachfully against the blessed Virgin

or the apostles should forfeit five pounds; and that blasphemy' against God should be punished with death.

10. By the enactment of this statute, the Catholic planters of Maryland procured to their adopted country the distinguished praise of being the first of the American States in which toleration' was established by law; and graced their peculiar faith with the signal and unwonted merit of protecting those rights of conscience which no other Christian association in the world was yet sufficiently humane and enlightened to recognize. It is a striking and instructive spectacle to behold at this period the Puritans' persecuting their Protestant brethren in New England; the Protestant Episcopalians' inflicting similar rigor and injustice on the Puritans in Virginia; and the Catholics, against whom all the others were combined, forming in Maryland a sanctuary' where Christians of every denomination" might worship, yet none might oppress, and where even Protestants sought refuge from Protestant intolerance.

The Settlement of Pennsylvania.-Bancroft.

[From the "History of the United States."]

1. PENNSYLVANIA* included the principal settlements of the Swedes; and patents for land had been made to Dutch and English by the Dutch West India Company, and afterward by the Duke of York. The royal proclamation" soon announeed to all the inhabitants of the province', that WILLIAM PENN, then absolute proprietary, was invested with all powers and pre-eminences necessary for the government. The proprietary also issued his proclamation to his vassals and subjects. It was in the following words:

2. "MY FRIENDS: I wish you all happiness here and nereafter. These are to lett you know that it hath pleased God in his providence to cast you within my Lott and Care. It is a business, that though I never undertook before, yet God has

This name literally means "Penn's woods," having reference to the wild condition of the tract of country of which he received a grant from the king.

given me an understanding of my duty, and an honest minde to doe it uprightly. I hope you will not be troubled at your change and the King's choice; for you are now fixt, at the mercy of no Governor that comes to make his fortune great. You shall be governed by laws of your own making, and live a free, and if you will, a sober and industreous People. I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress his person. God has furnisht me with a better resolution, and has given me his grace to keep it. In short, whatever sober and free men can reasonably desire for the security and improvement of their own happiness, I shall heartily comply with. I beseech God to direct you in the way of righteousness, and therein prosper you and your children after you. I am your true friend,* “W.M. PENN. "London, 8th of the month called April, 1681."

3. Such were the pledges of the Quaker sovereign on assuming the government; it is the duty of history to state, that, during his long reign, these pledges were redeemed. He never refused the freemen of Pennsylvania a reasonable desire. . . . . . Every arrangement for a voyage to his province being finished, Penn, in a beautiful letter, took leave of his family. His wife, who was the love of his youth, he reminded of his impoverishment in consequence of his public spirit, and recommended economy: "Live low and sparingly till my debts be paid." Yet for his children he adds, "Let their learning be liberal; spare no cost, for by such parsimony" all is lost that is saved." Agriculture he proposed as their employment. "Let my chil

dren be husbandmen and housewives."

4. Friends in England watched his departure with anxious hope; on him rested the expectations of their society, and their farewell at parting was given with "the innocence and kindness of the child that has no guile." After a long passage, rendered gloomy by frequent death among the passengers, many of whom had in England been his immediate neigh

* It will be observed by the young reader that many words are not spelled in this letter as at the present time. The orthography of the language was not so correct or so well settled then as it is now. William Penn was an educated man.

bors, on the 27th day of October, 1682, William Penn landed at Newcastle. . . .

5. The news spread rapidly that the Quaker king was at Newcastle; and, on the day after his landing, in presence of a crowd of Swedes, and Dutch, and English, who had gathered round the court-house, his deeds of feoffment were produced. the Duke of York's agent surrendered the territory by the solemn delivery of earth and water, and Penn, invested with supreme and undefined power in Delaware, addressed the assembled multitude on government, recommended sobriety and peace, and pledged himself to grant liberty of conscience and civil freedom.

6. From Newcastle, Penn ascended the Delaware to Chester, where he was hospitably received by the honest, kindhearted emigrants who had preceded him from the north of England; the little village of herdsmen and farmers, with their plain manners, gentle dispositions, and tranquil passions, seemed a harbinger of a golden age. From Chester, tradition describes the journey of Penn to have been continued with a few friends in an open boat, in the earliest days of November, to the beautiful bank, fringed with pine-trees, on which the city of Philadelphia was soon to rise.

7. In the following weeks, Penn visited West and East New Jersey, New York, the metropolis of his neighbor proprietary, the Duke of York, and, after meeting Friends on Long Island, he returned to the banks of the Delaware. To this period belongs his first grand treaty with the Indians. Beneath a large elm-tree at Shakamaxon, on the northern edge of Philadelphia, William Penn, surrounded by a few friends, in the habiliments of peace, met the numerous delegation of the Lenni Lenape tribes. The great treaty was not for the purchase of lands, but, confirming what Penn had written, and Markham covenanted, its sublime purpose was the recognition of the equal rights of humanity.

8. Under the shelter of the forest, now leafless by the frosts of autumn, Penn proclaimed to the men of the Algonquin race, from both banks of the Delaware, from the borders of

the Schuylkill (skool'kill), and it may have been, even from the Susquehanna, the same simple message of peace and love which George Fox had professed before Cromwell, and Mary Fisher had borne to the Grand Turk. The English and the Indian should respect the same moral law, should be alike secure in their pursuits and their possessions, and adjust every difference by a peaceful tribunal, composed of an equal number of men from each race.

9. "We meet"-such were the words of William Penn-" on the broad pathway of good faith and good will; no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love. I will not call you children, for parents sometimes chide their children too severely; nor brothers only, for brothers differ. The friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain, for that the rains might rust, or the falling tree might break. We are the same as if one man's body were to be divided into two parts; we are all one flesh and blood."

10. The children of the forest were touched by the sacred doctrine, and renounced their guile and their revenge. They received the presents of Penn in sincerity, and with hearty friendship they gave the belt of wampum". "We will live," said they, "in love with William Penn and his children, as long as the moon and the sun shall endure." This treaty of peace and friendship was made under the open sky, by the side of the Delaware, with the sun, and the river, and the forest for witnesses. It was not confirmed by an oath; it was not ratified by signature and seals; no written record of the conference can be found; and its terms and conditions had no abiding monument but on the heart. There they were written like the law of God, and were never forgotten.

11. The simple sons of the wilderness, returning to their wigwams, kept the history of the covenant by strings of wampum, and, long afterward, in their cabins, would count over the shells on a clean piece of bark, and recall to their own memory, and repeat to their children, or to the stranger, the words of William Penn. New England had just terminated a disastrous war of extermination'; the Dutch were scarcely ever