We now return to New Jersey, which, on the ratification of peace between England and Holland, again reverted to the English proprietaries. Berkeley, however, sold his share for £1,000 to John Fenwick and Edward Byllinge, both Quakers. The Quakers, holding opinions in advance of their age, and carrying out those opinions into practice, were persecuted everywhere, more or less, in the New World as in the Old; and now, therefore, that they numbered among their brethren men of wealth and influence, they purchased for themselves a district where “Friends” might find a safe asylum, and the “Holy Experiment of a Christian commonwealth might be tried.”
The “Holy Experiment” of the Quakers, and the “Grand Model Constitution” of Locke and Shaftesbury, were two extremes. In them intellectual pride and worldly wisdom were exhibited on the one hand, and on the other the philosophy of Christianity. The quakerism of Fox and Penn and Barclay was simply Christianity as Christ and the apostles promulgated it; it was that wisdom and truth which ancient philosophers, sages and poets of all nations acknowledged and sought after, and which modern philosophers and poets—Descartes and Bacon and Coleridge and Wordsworth and Emerson—have taught, and are teaching, and to which the present age is listening and growing wiser by so doing. But quakerism rose in an age of excitement, and the absurdities and extravagances of fanaticism threw a disrepute over the grandeur and sublimity of the doctrines which it taught, and which its disciples were ready to seal with their blood. Of all sects who have arisen since the days of the apostles, none comprehended the enlightening and ennobling truths of Christianity so fully as the Quakers. None comprehended Christianity in its broad universality as they. The “light and the truth,” which they declared were like God’s natural gifts of air and sunshine, given to all alike, rich or poor, bond or free, learned or unlearned, Christian or savage, man or woman,—were the immortal prerogatives of humanity. In this doctrine of the universality of the “inner light,” the Quaker regarded all men as equal by creation. “God discovers himself to every man,” says Penn;—“every mortal truth exists in every man’s and woman’s heart as an incorruptible seed,” says Barclay. “The Bible alone, the Quaker maintained, only enlightened those to whom it was conveyed; but the whole human race was illumined by this inner light. It was ever present in the human breast, to warn, to counsel and to console. The inner light shed its blessings on woman equally with man.” “It redeems her by the dignity of her moral nature, and claims for her the equal culture and the free exercise of her endowments. Woman is man’s companion, according to the Quaker, in his intellectual and moral advancement; woman, as a human being, has equal rights with man.”
All men, the Quaker argues, are equal; and he bows not down to his fellow-man, but to God alone, and says thee and thou to all, nor uncovers his head in token of obeisance to any.
“George Fox declares,” says Bancroft, in his able summary of quakerism, “that he saw his doctrine in the pure openings of light without the help of any man. But the spirit that made to him the revelation was the invisible spirit of the age, rendered wise by tradition, and in a season of revolution excited by the enthusiasm of liberty and religion. There is a close analogy between the popular revolutions of France and England. In France the same symbols and principles reappeared, but more rapidly, and on a wider theatre. The elements of humanity are always the same. The inner light dawns upon every nation, and is the same in every age; and the French Revolution was a result of the same principles as these of George Fox gaining dominion over the mind of Europe. They are expressed in the burning and often profound eloquence of Rousseau; they reappear in the masculine philosophy of Kant.
“Everywhere in Europe were the Quakers persecuted. In England, the general law against Dissenters, the statute against Papists, and special statutes against themselves, put them at the mercy of any malignant informer. They were hated by the church and by the Presbyterians, by the peers and by the king. During the Long Parliament, in the time of the protectorate, at the Restoration, in England, in New England, in the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, everywhere; and for long wearisome years they were exposed to perpetual dangers and griefs. They were whipped, crowded in jails among felons, kept in dungeons foul and gloomy beyond imagination, fined, exiled, sold into colonial bondage. Imprisoned in winter without fire, they perished from frost. Some were victims to the barbarous cruelty of the jailor; twice George Fox narrowly escaped death. The despised people braved every danger to continue their assemblies. Hauled out by violence, they returned. When their meeting-houses were torn down, they gathered openly on the ruins. They would not be dissolved by armed men; and when their opposers took shovels to throw rubbish on them, they stood close together, ‘willing to have been buried alive, witnessing to the Lord.’ They were exceeding great sufferers for their profession, and in many cases fared worse than the worst of their race. They seemed, indeed, to be as poor sheep appointed to the slaughter, and as a people killed all day long, abused and suffering, who went forth weeping and sowed in tears.”
And now this oppressed and persecuted people were about to have a land of refuge in the wilderness. In March, 1674, shortly after George Fox’s return to England after that visit to his friends in America of which we have spoken, and perhaps at his suggestion, Lord Berkeley sold his share of New Jersey to Fenwick and Byllinge; and the following year, Fenwick, with a large number of Friends’ families, set sail in the Griffith, and ascending the Delaware, landed at a place which he called Salem, for it indeed seemed the “dwelling-place of peace.”
Byllinge having become embarrassed in his circumstances, assigned his share of the province to William Penn and two others, still Quakers, and their earliest care was to obtain a division of the territory between themselves and Sir George Carteret, so that they might be able to carry out their own views of independent government. New Jersey was therefore divided, Carteret receiving the eastern portion, which was called East New Jersey, and Fenwick and his friends the western, or West New Jersey.
The Quakers, like the pilgrim fathers of the Mayflower, prepared the fundamental law of the colony even before they took possession, so that from the first they were under the guidance of an enlightened legislation. The quaker proprietaries, in their “Concessions,” “laid a foundation,” to use their own words, “for after ages to understand their liberty as Christians and as men, that they may not be brought into bondage but by their own consent; for we put the power in the people.”
The fundamental laws of New West Jersey were published in March, 1677, and afford a striking contrast to “the Grand Model” of Carolina. They insured entire freedom of conscience, enacting that no person, at any time or in any way, should be called in question or suffer damage or detriment on account of religious opinion. Government was to be administered by a general assembly elected by ballot; every citizen being capable either of electing or being elected. Every member of the assembly was to be paid one shilling a day by his constituents, “that he may be known as the servant of the people.” The executive power was vested in the commissioners appointed by the assembly, and the people themselves chose justices and constables; the judges were to be appointed by the assembly. Trial by jury was established; and, that “all and every person in the province, by the help of the Lord and these fundamentals, may be free from oppression and slavery, it was enacted, that no man could be imprisoned for debt; courts were to be managed without attorneys or counsellors; the native was to be protected by the laws; and the orphan to be educated by the state.”
Two emigrating quaker-companies were commenced in England, one in London, the other in Yorkshire. Thomas Olive and others went out as commissioners to superintend the colony till a permanent government was established; and in 1677 about 400 colonists went out, and purchasing land from the Indians, established themselves at Burlington, on the Delaware—these being, probably, Yorkshire Friends—and a tent covered with sail-cloth furnished them with a place for their religious worship. The Indians, those peaceful Delawares, received them as friends, and rejoiced in the prospect of dwelling in perpetual amity with them. “You are our brethren,” said the sachems, “and we will live like brothers with you. We will have a broad path for you and us to walk in. If an Englishman shall fall asleep in this path, the Indian shall pass him by, and say, he is an Englishman; he is asleep, let him alone. The path shall be plain; there shall not be in it a stump to hurt the foot.”