William Penn

by Rupert Sargent Holland

Then he advertised for settlers for his new domain, warning them that, for a few years at least, they would have to do without some of the comforts of England, but explaining that it was a glorious opportunity to spread English influence in a new world. He offered them very easy terms of rent; they could have five thousand acres by paying £100; and a shilling rent for every hundred acres annually afterward. If they did not have the money to take up so large a tract of land, they could have two hundred acres or less for the rent of one shilling an acre. These terms were very attractive, and many persons who were eager to take a share in what Penn was pleased to call "his holy experiment of Pennsylvania," applied for tracts of land in the new colony.

Penn was now a very practical, businesslike man, and he meant to add to his fortune by means of his new province, and also to become a man of great influence. He intended to show that a people like the Quakers could build up a community where liberty should be the watchword, where war should be frowned upon, and where every man should have a chance to own land and cultivate it. He was not a dreamer only, but a great planner and organizer as well, one of those men who seized the opportunity that the new world of America presented, and hoped that he might there set right the wrongs that had brought so much trouble to the poorer classes in Europe. There was probably no finer type of man among those who settled the colonies of North America than this broadminded, well-balanced, shrewd, and yet ideal-loving Quaker courtier, with his profound sense of justice, and his determination to deal fairly by all,—both settlers and Indians.

Some men came to him offering to form a company and pay him £6000 in return for a monopoly of the trade with the Indians in his province, but this he refused. He had his own ideas as to how he and his settlers must deal with the Indians; they must deal with them fairly; and since they were to take land that belonged to the Indians, they must pay for every acre they occupied in their settlements and farms. This was a new idea, and not the usual custom, since most colonists paid no regard whatever to any right the Indians might have to their lands. He wrote out a set of rules for dealing with the Indians, and among them it was stated that a white man who injured an Indian was to be dealt with exactly as if he had injured another white man; and that all disputes between the two races were to be adjusted by a jury of twelve men, six settlers and six Indians. A man who tried to obtain some special privileges from him paid him the following noble tribute: "I believe he truly does aim more at justice and righteousness, and spreading of truth, than at his own particular gain."

Meantime, several ships carrying settlers started for America, and Penn sent out three agents to choose a site for a town and deal with the Indians of the neighborhood. He told these agents to examine the different creeks on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River in order to choose one that should allow boats to go up into the country. To use his own words, he ordered them, "to settle a great town, and be sure to make your choice where it is most navigable, high, dry, and healthy; that is, where most ships may best ride, of deepest draught of water, if possible to load or unload at the bank or quay side, without boating or lighterage."

When the agents arrived, they found that the settlers already there knew the best situation for a great settlement,—at a place a few miles north of where the Schuylkill River flowed into the Delaware. This place they named Philadelphia, a word that means "Brotherly love."

What pleasure and satisfaction Penn must have taken in planning how this new town should be built! He outlined it very carefully, directing where the markets and storehouses should be placed, and telling his agents to choose a site in the center of the line of houses facing the river for his own residence. "Let every house be placed," he suggested, "if the person pleases, in the middle of its plat, as to the breadth of it, that so there may be ground on each side for gardens, or orchards, or fields, that it may be a green country town, which will never be burnt and always wholesome." From that comes the name of "Penn's green country town" that was so often applied to Philadelphia in the early years of its existence.

Penn sent a special letter to the Indians. "Now the great God hath been pleased to make me concerned in your part of the world," he wrote them, "and the King of the country where I live hath given me a great province therein; but I desire to enjoy it with your love and consent, that we may always live together as neighbors and friends; else what would the great God do to us who hath made us (not to devour and destroy one another, but) to live soberly and kindly together in the world?"

Penn was now such a prominent figure in England, the owner of a great tract of land given him by the king, that he was able to help those Quakers who got into trouble with the government; and when he was not busy planning his colony, he was usually helping some persecuted members of his faith, and urging them to join him in his new province where liberty in religion was to be the keynote. He also drew up a constitution for Pennsylvania, and then, in the summer of 1682, he was ready to set sail for his new domain.