You will pardon me, gentlemen, for having detained you so long in discussing the foundation of Maryland. The planting of your own state is familiar to you. It has been thoroughly treated in the writings of your Proud, Watson, Gordon, Du Ponceau, Tyson, Fisher, Wharton, Reed, Ingraham, Armstrong and many others. Can it be necessary for me to say a word, in Philadelphia, of the history of William Penn;—of him, who, as a lawgiver and executive magistrate,—a practical, pious, Quaker,—first developed in state affairs, and reduced to practice, the liberty and equality enjoined by his religion and founded on liberal christianity;—of him who first taught mankind the sublime truth, that—
"Beneath the rule of men entirely great
"The Pen is mightier than the sword? Behold
"The arch-enchanter's wand,—itself a nothing!
"But taking sorcery from the master hand
"To paralyse the Cesars! Take away the sword,
"States can be saved without it!"
It would be idle to detail the facts of his life or government, for, not only have Pennsylvanians recorded and dwelt upon them until they are household lessons, but they have been favorite themes for French, British, Italian, German and Spanish philosophers and historians.
It was Penn to whom the charter of 1681 was granted, half a century after the patent issued to Cecilius Calvert. The instrument itself, has many of the features of the Maryland grant; but it is well known that the absolute powers it bestowed on the Proprietary, were only taken by him in order that he might do as he pleased in the formation of a new state, whose principles of freedom and peace, might, first in the World's history, practically assume a national aspect.
I shall not recount the democratic liberalities of his system, as it was matured by his personal efforts and advice. Original, as he unquestionably was, in genius; bold as he was in resisting the pomp of the world, at a time when its vanities sink easiest and most corruptingly into the heart,—we may nevertheless, say, that the deeds and history of his time, as well as of the previous fifty years, had a large share in moulding his character.
In William Penn, the crude germs of religious originality, which, in Fox, were struggling, and sometimes almost stifling for utterance, found their first, ablest, and most accomplished expounder. He gave them refinement and respectability. His intimacy with Algernon Sidney taught him the value of introducing those principles into the doctrines of government;—and thus, he soon learned that when political rights grow into the sanctity of religious duties, they receive thereby a vitality which makes them irresistible. Penn, in this wise, become an expanded embodiment of Fox and Sidney; and, appropriating their mingled faith and polity, discarded every thing that was doctrinal and not practical, and realized, in government, their united wisdom. Nobly in his age, did he declare: "I know what is said by the several admirers of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, which are the rule of one, of a few, and of the many, and are the three common ideas of government when men discourse on that subject. But I choose to solve the controversy with 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; and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, and confusion."[15]
In these historical illustrations, I have striven to show that Primitive Christianity was the basis of equal rights and responsibilities. The alleged defence of this christianity, in the land of its birth, gave rise to "holy wars," in which Feudalism and Chivalry originated. Feudalism was the source of the strictest military dependence, as well as of manifold social perversions. The knight expanded into a lord,—the subject commoner dwindled to a soldier or a serf. Thus Feudalism and a great historical Church, grew up in aristocratic co-partnership over the bodies and souls of mankind, until the one, by the omnipotence of its spiritual authority, ripened into an universal hierarchy, while the other, by the folly of its "divine right," decayed into a temporal despotism that fell at the first blow of the heads-man's axe. The reformation and revolution broke the enchanter's wand; and, when the cloud passed from the bloody stage, instead of seeing before us a magician full of the glories of his art and almost deceived himself, by the splendor of his incantations, we beheld a meagre and pitiful creature, who though blind and palsied, still retained for a while, the power of witch-like mischief. But his reign was not lasting. The stern Puritan,—the pioneer of Independence,—advanced with his remorseless weapon,—while quietly, in his shadow, followed the calm and patient Friend, sowing the seed of Peace and Good-Will in the furrows plowed by the steel of his unrelenting predecessor. And thus again, after ages of corrupt and desolating perversion, the selfish heart of man came humbly back to its original faith that Liberal Christianity is the true basis of enlightened freedom, and the only foundation of good and lasting government.
The bleak winds of March were blowing in Maryland, when Calvert conciliated and purchased from the Indians at Saint Mary's; but Autumn was