This sect, which brings mankind to a resemblance of Thomson’s Laplanders,
“Who little pleasure know, and feel no pain,”
might be supposed the last to captivate, nay, to absorb, such a mind as I have been describing. Yet so it was: even in the midst of all this cold humility, dominion was to be found. That rule, which of all others, is most gratifying to a mind conscious of its own power, and directing it to the purposes of benevolence, the voluntary subjection of mind, the homage which a sect pays to its leader, is justly accounted the most gratifying species of power; and to this lurking ambition, every thing is rendered subservient by those who have once known this native and inherent superiority. This man, who had wasted his inheritance, alienated his relations, and estranged his friends; who had forsaken the religion of his ancestors, and in a great measure, the customs of his country; whom some charged with folly, and others with madness, was, nevertheless, destined to plan with consummate wisdom, and execute with indefatigable activity and immovable firmness, a scheme of government, such as has been the wish, at least, of every enlarged and benevolent mind, (from Plato downwards,) which has indulged speculations of the kind. The glory of realizing, in some degree, all these fair visions, was, however, reserved for William Penn alone.
Imagination delights to dwell on the tranquil abodes of plenty, content, and equanimity, that so quickly rose like an exhalation in the domains of this pacific legislator. That he should expect to protect the quiet abodes of his peaceful and industrious followers, merely with a fence of olive, (as one may call his gentle institutions,) is wonderful; and the more so, when we consider him to have lived in the world, and known too well, by his own experience, of what discordant elements it is composed. A mind so powerful and comprehensive as his, could not but know, that the wealth which quiet and blameless industry insensibly accumulates, proves merely a lure to attract the armed spoiler to the defenceless dwellings of those, who do not think it a duty to protect themselves.
“But when divine ambition swell’d his mind,
Ambition truly great, of virtuous deeds,”
he could no otherwise execute his plan of utility, than by the agency of a people who were bound together by a principle, at once adhesive and exclusive, and who were too calm and self-subdued, too benignant and just, to create enemies to themselves among their neighbours. There could be no motive but the thirst of rapine, for disturbing a community so inoffensive; and the founder, no doubt, flattered himself that the parent country would not fail to extend to them that protection, which their useful lives and helpless state both needed and deserved.
Never, surely, were institutions better calculated for nursing the infancy of a sylvan colony, from which the noisy pleasures, and more bustling varieties of life were necessarily excluded. The serene and dispassionate state, to which it seems was the chief aim of this sect to bring the human mind, is precisely what is requisite to reconcile it to the privations that must be encountered, during the early stages of the progression of society, which necessarily excluded from the pleasures of refinement, should be guarded from its pains.
Where nations, in the course of time, become civilized, the process is so gradual from one race to another, that no violent effort is required to break through settled habits, and acquire new tastes and inclinations, fitted to what might be almost styled a new mode of existence. But when colonies are first settled in a country so entirely primitive as that to which William Penn led his followers, there is a kind of retrograde movement of the mind, requisite to reconcile people to the new duties and new views that open to them, and to make the total privation of wonted objects, modes, and amusements, tolerable.
Perfect simplicity of taste and manners, and entire indifference to much of what the world calls pleasure, were necessary to make life tolerable to the first settlers in a trackless wilderness. These habits of thinking and living, so difficult to acquire, and so painful when forced upon the mind by inevitable necessity, the quakers brought with them, and left, without regret, a world from which they were already excluded by that austere simplicity which peculiarly fitted them for their new situation. A kindred simplicity, and a similar ignorance of artificial refinements and high seasoned pleasures, produced the same effect in qualifying the first settlers at Albany to support the privations, and endure the inconveniences of their novitiate in the forests of the new world. But to return to William Penn: the fair fabric he had erected, though it speedily fulfilled the utmost promise of hope, contained within itself the principle of dissolution, and from the very nature of the beings which composed it, must have decayed, though the revolutionary shock had not so soon shaken its foundations. Sobriety and prudence lead naturally to wealth, and wealth to authority, which soon strikes at the root of the short lived principle of equality. A single instance may occur here and there, but who can ever suppose nature running so contrary to her bias, that all the opulent members of a community should acquire or inherit wealth for the mere purpose of giving it away? Where there are no elegant arts to be encouraged, no elegant pleasures to be procured, where ingenuity is not to be rewarded, or talent admired or exercised; what is wealth but a cumbrous load, sinking the owner deeper and deeper into grossness and dulness, having no incitement to exercise the only faculties permitted him to use, and few objects to relieve in a community from which vice and poverty are equally excluded by their industry, and their wholesome rule of expulsion. We all know that there is not in society a more useless and disgusting character than what is formed by the possession of great wealth, without elegance or refinement; without, indeed, that liberality which can only result from a certain degree of cultivation. What then would a community be, entirely formed of such persons, or supposing such a community to exist, how long would they adhere to the simple manners of their founder, with such a source of corruption mingled with their very existence? Detachment from pleasure and from vanity, frugal and simple habits, and an habitual close adherence to some particular trade or employment, are circumstances that have a sure tendency to enrich the individuals who practise them. This, in the end, is “to give humility a coach and six,” that is, to destroy the very principle of adhesion which binds and continues the sect.