As regards the tree which was in its prime when this group, beautiful in the sight of heaven, stood under its branches, our readers may have an interest in knowing that it was situate on the northern side of Philadelphia, and was standing until March 3rd, 1810, when it was blown down. A marble monument now marks the place where it stood. “It was a remarkably wide-spreading rather than lofty tree, its main branch measuring 150 feet; its age, as computed by its circles of annual growth, was 283 years. While it stood, the Methodists and Baptists held their summer meetings under its shade.” It was truly a “gospel tree.”
The treaty of peace made on this occasion was never broken on either side for seventy years—as long as the Quakers retained the government of the province. The terrible and bloody Indian war of New England was but a few years passed; Maryland and Virginia were in a state of continual hostility with these very Algonquin or Delaware Indians, who were naturally inclined for peace; so also the Dutch. It remained alone for William Penn and his friends, who believing God’s word implicitly—that Christ’s law was one of love, not of violence—came in the guise of peace; and through all the numerous records of quaker life in America, even in the midst of Indian warfare and outrage, not one drop of quaker blood was shed. To be a Quaker, to possess no “weapon of war,” was to be safe from Indian danger. Many a beautiful and touching narrative is related, in the early Friends’ books, of solitary dwellers in the great woods of Virginia and Maryland, when, on the approach of the Indians, who had left fire and desolation behind them, “the fierce dogs that usually kept the place” were cowed into silence, and the pious people, to use their own phraseology, “not having been free in their minds” to take in the string which lifted the latch—their only means of security—lay wakeful, listening to the coming footsteps of the foe, who, on finding the latch-string trustfully outside the door, “spake a few Indian words, and went on.”
Once only was the calm of peace disturbed. A rumour passed through the province, in the year 1688, that 500 Indians were assembled on the Brandywine to massacre the settlers. On this, Caleb Pusey and five other Friends presented themselves unarmed before them, to inquire the cause of this report. “The great God,” said the Quaker, addressing the sachem, “who made all mankind, extends his love to Indians and English. The rains and the dews fall alike on the ground of both; the sun shines on us equally, and we ought to love one another.” “What you say is true,” returned the red chieftain; “go home, and harvest the corn which God has given you: we mean you no harm.”
In January, or the First Month, as Friends called it, of 1683, the ground having been purchased from the Swedes, who had already a church there, the new city was laid out on a neck of land between the confluence of the Schuylkill and the Delaware, “a situation,” said William Penn, “unsurpassed by any of the many places he had seen in the world.” To the infant city, thus pleasantly situated, the name of Philadelphia, or the City of Brotherly Love, was given. The streets were designated from the native groves of chesnut, pine or walnut through which they ran; and so rapid was the growth of the city, that it contained eighty houses by the end of the year; and in two years time it contained 2,500 inhabitants; schools were established, and a printing-press was at work. In three years it was larger than New York in half a century. Well might Penn observe, that he might without vanity say that he had led the greatest colony into America that ever man did on private credit, and that the most prosperous beginnings which ever were are to be found among them. Well might he say so; for in 1682 alone, the year in which Philadelphia was founded, twenty-two vessels, bringing over 2,000 persons, arrived. Many, coming late in the autumn, took up their temporary abode in caves dug in the river banks to receive them; and provisions falling short, they were fed, as if by Providence, by unusual flocks of pigeons and extraordinary “draughts of fishes,” while the friendly Indians themselves brought them game which they had hunted.
In March, the second legislative assembly of the province was held in Philadelphia, though many of the inhabitants as yet lived in hollow trees. Fifty-four representatives, nine from each of the six counties, “Swedes, Dutch and quaker preachers,” were appointed to draw up a charter of liberties which altered and amended the previous laws; William Penn having liberally announced at the opening of the assembly, that as regarded the frame of government prepared in England, “they might amend, alter, or add, and that he was ready to settle such foundations as might be for their happiness.” This principle of legislating for the happiness of the people was ever acknowledged by Penn. To his dying day he declared, even though in this Eden of his planting many poison growths had sprung up which embittered his life, that if the people needed anything to make them happier, he would grant it. The constitution now established was democratic, with the exception of an hereditary proprietary, whose power, however, was controlled by the people. As regarded a revenue, he was offered a tax on all exports, as was the case in Maryland, the revenue of Lord Baltimore being derived from a tax on tobacco; but this he declined, unwilling to “burden his colony with taxes.” What a contrast is this to the views taken by the Lords Culpepper, Arlington and Lovelace! Orphan courts were established for administering the affairs of deceased persons, and for the prevention of lawsuits three “peacemakers” were appointed in each county, thus carrying out the quaker principle of arbitration instead of action at law. Liberal and upright as was Penn’s conduct as head of a government, a signal mistake was made by the incompatible union of two opposing elements, democracy and feudality; Penn’s principles accorded to his colony the utmost popular liberty, but his circumstances made him absolute ruler. Hence for ninety years Pennsylvania was distracted with the jarring of these two discordant elements.
Penn, soon after his arrival in America, visited Lord Baltimore in Maryland, partly as a visit of friendship, and partly for the arrangement of boundaries, which from the very first was an intricate and perplexing question. The defined boundaries, both of Penn’s and Baltimore’s charter, were inconsistent with each other, more especially as the number of miles contained in a degree was now altered to sixty-nine from sixty, by which measurement Baltimore’s grant had been made. This question was no way adjusted, when Penn, in 1684, having organised, as he hoped, a satisfactory government, entered into a treaty of lasting peace with the natives, and seen his city and his colony flourishing in unexampled prosperity, returned to England, “intrusting the great seal to his friend Lloyd, one of the principal quaker settlers, and the executive power to a committee of the council.”
As yet not a cloud dimmed the social or civil horizon of Pennsylvania; and leaving his mansion of Pennsbury, “the sweet quiet” of which seems to have been delicious to his soul, he thus wrote, on board, a farewell to the people of his land of promise, which he sent to them before he sailed:—“My love and my life,” said he, “are to you and with you, and no water can quench it, nor distance bring it to an end. I have been with you, cared for you, and served you with unfeigned love; and you are beloved of me and dear to me beyond utterance. I bless you in the name and power of the Lord, and may God bless you with his righteousness, peace and plenty all the land over! You are come to a quiet land,” continued he, “and liberty and authority are in your hands. Rule for Him under whom the princes of this world will one day esteem it their honour to govern.” Then, addressing the city which he had planted, he breaks forth like an apostle to one of the churches: “And thou Philadelphia, the virgin settlement of this province, my soul prays to God for thee that thou mayst stand in the day of trial, and that thy children may be blessed.”
William Penn reached London in October, 1684, after an absence of two years; and the hot dispute between himself and Lord Baltimore, regarding boundaries, was submitted to a Committee of Trade and Plantations, by which it was decided that the so-called Territories, now constituting the state of Delaware, and which Lord Baltimore claimed, formed no part of Maryland. They were therefore once more formally assigned to Penn, to whom was thus secured that outlet to the ocean which he so much coveted. The northern line of boundary was settled the following year, and that again to the disadvantage of Baltimore.
When the Duke of York ascended the throne as James II., Penn used his influence with him to obtain general liberty of conscience; and through his means 1,200 Quakers alone were liberated from imprisonment for conscience-sake. Nor did his own people only claim his interposition of mercy; it was suffering humanity for which he appealed, and so widely extended was the reputation of his philanthropy and power, that all the oppressed thronged to him for aid; even Massachusetts, just then in the agony of losing her charter, sent to the head of “the abominable sect of Quakers” to beseech his interference on their behalf with the king. And though he could not save the chartered liberties of the other sister-states, yet so great was the esteem with which the monarch regarded him, that Pennsylvania was the only one against whose charter a quo warranto was not issued.
