however, wished a still freer field to work in, and soon he secured from King Charles, in consideration of a large debt due him from the crown, a grant of wild territory west of the Delaware between New York and Maryland.

Owing to geographical ignorance, the grant conflicted with those of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and especially with those of New York and Maryland. The adjustment with Maryland was not finally accomplished until 1767, when Mason and Dixon, two English surveyors, ran the boundary line that goes by their name-commonly referred to in later his

and South.

From the painting by Sir Peter Lely, now in the gallery of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.

And his

vania

Penn's charter of 1680 gave him proprietary power like that of Baltimore in Maryland, with some limitations. Settlers were guaranteed the right of appeal from colonial courts to the king in council, and all colonial charter for laws were to be subject to a royal veto. The PennsylQuaker colony was required to tolerate the established English church, and especial emphasis was placed upon obedience to the navigation laws. A unique clause renounced all authority on the part of the crown to tax the colonists without the consent of the Assembly or of Parliament, an indirect assertion that Parliament might tax the colony. The Delaware settlements were not covered

by the charter, but had a similar form of government under the same proprietor.

Pennsylvania knew none of the desperate hardships that make so large a part of the story of the earlier colonies.

Early Pennsylvania :

rapid growth

are

and

The wealthy Quakers of England and Wales helped the enterprise cordially, and the Mennonites (a German sect somewhat resembling Quakers) poured in a large and industrious immigration. In 1687 one of their settlements voiced the first protest in America against slavery: "Those who steal or rob men, and those who buy or purchase them, they not all alike? Here is liberty of conscience here ought to be likewise liberty of the body. . . To bring men hither or to robb or sell them against their will, we stand against." Thanks to Penn's wise and just policy with the natives, there were no Indian troubles. Population increased rapidly, and material prosperity was unbroken. By 1700 (when only twenty years old) the colony stood next to Virginia and Massachusetts in wealth and numbers. Unlike other colonies, except conquered New York, the population was at least half non-English from the first, Welsh, Germans, Swedes, Dutch, French, Danes, and Finns. Penn took no thought to extend his own powers. His ideas, for the time, were broad and noble. "The nations want a precedent for a just and righteous governhis colonists ment," he wrote. "The people must rule." And again, in a letter to a friend, "I propose . . to leave myself and my successors no power of doing mischief — that the will of one man may not hinder the good of a whole country." To the expected settlers he proclaimed (1681), "You shall be governed by laws of your own making, and live a free and, if you will, a sober and industrious people.”

Penn and

The first "Frame of Government" granted by Penn to the colonists was very liberal but it was clumsy; and even with a proprietor so unselfish and settlers so good, politics were confused by bitter quarrels for some years. Finally Penn was persuaded to substitute for that first charter a new fundamental law, the Charter of 1701. The colonists accepted

PENNSYLVANIA CHARTER OF 1701

131

this by formal compact, and it remained the constitution of Pennsylvania until 1776. The governor was appointed by the proprietor, and had a veto upon all legislation. Penn's He was aided by an appointed Council, which Charter of body was not part of the legislature. The people 1701 to the chose a one-House Assembly each year. This colony body had complete control over its own sittings: the charter fixed a date for the annual meeting, and provided that the Assembly should be dissolved only by its own vote. Freedom of conscience was guaranteed to all who believed in "one Almighty God"; and the franchise was given to all who accepted Christ as the "Savior of the World” and who owned 50 acres of land or £50 personal estate. Pennsylvania was the only colony in which Roman Catholics had political rights in the eighteenth century. (Rhode Island disfranchised them in 1719, and for Maryland, see page 46.)

The provision for religious freedom was declared not subject to amendment. All other parts of the charter could be amended by the joint action of the proprietor and six sevenths of the Assembly. This was the first written constitution to provide a definite machinery for its own amend

ment.

1690

The "Restoration" of Charles II began a new era for the English race; but the two divisions of Englishmen on opposite sides of the Atlantic met very different Summary fates. In England itself, the second Stuart period for 1660(1660-1688) was a time of infamy and peril. In America, it was singularly progressive and attractive. For the first time the government of the home land took an active part in fostering the plantations; and the separate colonies first began to have a common history. Three great characteristics marked the period:

66

English territory in America was greatly expanded.

The English government established its first real Three char'colonial department," to regulate colonial affairs acteristics and to draw the plantations into a closer dependence upon England.

This new attitude of the home government, both in its wise and unwise applications, stirred the colonists to a new insistence upon their rights of self-government.

per

Thus there developed an "irrepressible conflict" between the natural and wholesome English demand for imperial The struggle unity and the even more indispensable American to save self- demand for local freedom. Of this struggle the government most picturesque episodes are Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia and the Andros incident in New England. The conflict was intensified by evil traits on both sides,—by the sonal despotic inclinations of James II and of some of his agents in the colonies, and by pettiness and ignorance on the part of the colonists; and each party was blind to the good on the other side. Still the unconquerable determination of the colonists to manage their own affairs, even though inspired in part by narrow prejudice, is the central fact of the period. If we mark the period by one phrase we may best call it the era of the struggle to save self-government.

During this period, too, the view-point for our history is shifting. Until 1660, the colonists are Englishmen — enter

English pioneers become colonial

prising Englishmen busied in establishing themselves on scattered outlying frontiers. After 1690, they are Americans-colonial Americans, it is true, dependent still upon England, partly from custom, partly from affection, and largely from need of protection against the French on the north.

Americans

The marks of this period are all found, intensified, in the next seventy years, with the addition of one new element, the incessant war with the French and Indians.

CHAPTER VII

"COLONIAL AMERICANS," 1690-1763

DESPITE frequent wars, the seventy years between the English Revolution and the American Revolution (1690-1760) were a period of marvelous prosperity for the col- Seventy onies. The older districts grew from straggling years of frontiers into rich and powerful communities prosperity marked by self-reliance and intense local patriotism. A new colony, Georgia, was added on the south (1732), and new frontiers were thrown out on the west. Population rose sixfold- from 250,000 (page 107) to 1,600,000; and large non-English elements appeared, especially in the middle colonies.

gration

The most numerous of these were the German Protestants, driven from their homes in South Germany by religious persecution and by the wars of Louis XIV. This Non-Engimmigration began to arrive about 1690. It went lish immimainly to New York and the Carolinas and especially to Pennsylvania. To the latter colony alone more than 100,000 Germans came between 1700 and 1775. A smaller but highly valuable contribution to American blood was made by the Huguenots, driven from France after 1683 by the persecution of Louis XIV. They came mainly to the Carolinas; but some settled in New England, New York, and Virginia. The names Paul Revere, Peter Faneuil, and Governor Bowdoin suggest the services of their sons in Massachusetts.

Another immigration of this period belongs especially to a new section the Scotch-Irish settlement in the "West." The first frontier in America was the "tidewater" The changregion, extending some fifty miles up the navi- ing frontiers gable streams. Near the mouth of such rivers, or on the