Pensylvania waz settled by a religious sect, remarkable for their sobriety, industry and pacific disposition. Mr. Penn, the first proprietor of the province, waz a man of superior talents. The free indulgence given to all religious denominations, invited settlers from England, Germany and Ireland, and the population of the province, with the consequential increese of the valu of lands, waz rapid beyond any thing known in the other colonies. The province however waz harrassed with disputes between the acting guvernors and the commons. The proprietary, who waz the guvernor, usually rezided in England; appointing a deputy with a council, to act for him in the province. The proprietaries were often selfish, and made demands upon the peeple, which their sense of liberty and right would not permit them to grant. The quit-rents, paper currency, and some other matters, were constant subjects of altercation, whenever the assembly convened.[159]
The long and violent opposition to the influence of their proprietaries, who were abroad, and often considered az hostile to popular privileges, together with the beneficial effects of a paper currency, during the infant state of the province, may be the reezons why the constitution of Pensylvania, formed at the revolution, verged too much towards an extreme of democracy;[160] and why the legislature of that state waz the first to issue a paper currency, after the war. The old republican patriots, who had resisted, with success, the encroachments of arbitrary guvernors and kings, determined to frame a constitution, which should prevent the interference of a guvernor and council in acts of legislation; and men who had seen the good effects of paper currency, without its evils, would be the first to recommend it. It iz natural; men are guverned by habit.
At the revolution in 1776, the representativs of the province, acting on the principle that public good transcends all considerations of individual right, assumed the reigns of government, formed a constitution for the purpose, and divested the proprietaries of both territory and jurisdiction. They gave them however, 130,000l. sterling in lieu of all quit-rents, and rezerved to them considerable tracts of land. The first constitution, like that of the Netherlands, waz framed upon the ruins of oppression, and with a too jealous attention to popular rights. It waz defectiv in the most material articles, and a few yeers experience induced the peeple to adopt another form, more analagous to thoze by which her sister states are guverned.
The laws of Pensylvania, respecting inheritances, hav not barred entails; but az entails may be docked by the English finesse of common recoveries; az the divisions of lands favor equality, az wel az the genius of the peeple, there can be no apprehensions of an aristocratical influence from large possessions of real estate. A single man may hold real or personal estate to such an amount, az to hav an undu influence in politics and commerce. When a man haz become so powerful that hiz nabors are afraid to demand their rights of him in a legal way; or when a town or city iz so far under hiz control, that the citizens are generally afraid of offending him, he iz or may be a dangerous man in a free state, and a bad man in any state. A Clive and a Hastings are az dangerous in a state, az an Arnold or a Shays, if they hav the same evil propensities; for thoze who oppoze law, are generally punished; but thoze who are abuv law, may do injustice with impunity.
The peeple in Pensylvania may be included under the three denominations of Frends, Germans, and Irish desendants. The Frends and Germans were the first settlers, and for the most part liv between the Delaware and Susquehanna. Theze are peeceable and industrious peeple. The Irish or their desendants, inhabit the western counties; they are industrious, but not so wel informed in general, az the inhabitants of some older counties, and at times hav been turbulent citizens. It waz the misfortune of this, az of all the suthern states, that no provision for public skools waz incorporated into the original fundamental laws.
Without such a provision, it iz not possible that a body of freemen should hav the reeding necessary to form just notions of liberty and law. This defect wil probably be supplied by the new constitution and the future laws of the state. The number of colleges and academies alreddy founded and endowed, proov the disposition of the legislature to encurage science. The only difficulty iz to persuade an agricultural peeple to settle in villages or clans, for the purpose of maintaining a clergyman and skoolmaster; and thus to carry into effect the wise and benevolent designs of their rulers.
Philadelphia iz a great commercial city; but it iz questioned whether commerce wil giv it a future growth equal to that of New York. The future population of the suthern part of New Jersey, and the peninsula between the Chesapeek and the Atlantic, wil not add much to the trade of Philadelphia. The naborhood of the city and most of the lands towards Lancaster and Bethlehem, are alreddy wel settled. About seventy three miles west of Philadelphia runs the Susquehanna; a river not indeed navigable at the mouth, but with some portages, capable of opening a communication by water from Wioming to the Chesapeek; and should canals be opened to avoid the falls and rapids, the trade of the state, quite to the bed of that river, wil center in Baltimore. At any rate Baltimore and Alexandria wil command most of the trade west of the Susquehanna; so that Philadelphia must depend mostly, for the increese of her business, on the population northward, about the hed of the Deleware. The commerce however wil always be considerable, and the spirit of the citizens in establishing manufactures, promises a great extension of the city.
The state of Pensylvania waz, for many yeers, agitated by a territorial controversy with Connecticut; the history of which iz breefly this.
King James I. in 1620, made a grant to a number of gentlemen, called the Plimouth Company, of all the lands in North America, included between the 40th and 48th degrees of latitude, throughout all the main land from see to see; except such lands az were then settled by some Christian prince or state. The only settlements at that time north of Virginia, were at New York and Albany, on the Hudson.
In 1628, a number of gentlemen obtained from the company a grant of lands, bounded on the north, by a line three miles north of Merrimak river, and on the south, by a line three miles south of Charles river, throughout the main lands from the Atlantic on the eest, to the South See, on the west. This waz the first grant of Massachusetts.