From clime to clime, from shore to shore,
The war-fiend raised his hateful yell,
And midst the storm that realms deplore,
Penn’s honour’d tree of concord fell.
And of that tree, that ne’er again
Shall Spring’s reviving influence know,
A relic, o’er th’ Atlantic main,
Was sent--the gift of foe to foe!
But though no more its ample shade
Wave green beneath Columbia’s sky,
Though every branch be now decay’d,
And all its scatter’d leaves be dry;
Yet, midst this relic’s sainted space,
A health-restoring flood shall spring,
In which the angel-form of Peace
May stoop to dip her dove-like wing.
So once the staff the prophet bore,
By wondering eyes again was seen
To swell with life through every pore,
And bud afresh with foliage green.
The wither’d branch again shall grow,
Till o’er the earth its shade extend--
And this--the gift of foe to foe--
Become the gift of friend to friend.
In the “Conditions” between William Penn, as Proprietary and Governor of
Pennsylvania, and the Adventurers and Purchasers in the same province,
“in behalf of the Indians it was stipulated, that, as it had been usual
with planters to overreach them in various ways, whatever was sold to
them in consideration of their furs should be sold in the public
market-place, and there suffer the test, whether good or bad: if good,
to pass; if not good, not to be sold for good; that the said native
Indians might neither be abused nor provoked. That no man should by any
ways or means, in word or deed, affront or wrong any Indian, but he
should incur the same penalty of the law as if he had committed it
against his fellow-planter; and if any Indian should abuse, in word or
deed, any planter of the province, that the said planter should not be
his own judge upon the said Indian, but that he should make his
complaint to the governor of the province, or his deputy, or some
inferior magistrate near him, who should to the utmost of his power take
care with the king of the said Indian, that all reasonable satisfaction
should be made to the said injured planter. And that all differences
between planters and Indians should be ended by twelve men, that is, by
six planters and six Indians, that so they might live friendly together,
as much as in them lay, preventing all occasions of heart-burnings and
mischief. These stipulations in favour of the poor natives will for ever
immortalize the name of William Penn; for, soaring above the prejudices
and customs of his time, by which navigators and adventurers thought it
right to consider the inhabitants of the lands they discovered as their
lawful prey, or as mere animals of the brute-creation, whom they might
treat, use, and take advantage of at their pleasure, he regarded them as
creatures endued with reason, as men of the like feelings and passions
with himself, as brethren both by nature and grace, and as persons,
therefore, to whom the great duties of humanity and justice were to be
extended, and who, in proportion to their ignorance, were the more
entitled to his fatherly protection and care.”[366]
* * * * *
The identical roll of parchment given by William Penn to the Indians was
shown by their descendants to some English officers some years ago. This
information, with the following passages, will be found in the “Notes”
to “Penn and the Indians,” the poem, by “William and Mary Howitt,” from
whence the motto is taken:--
“What shows the scrupulous adherence of the Indians to their engagements
in the most surprising light is, that long after the descendants of Penn
ceased to possess political influence in the state, in comparatively
recent times, when the Indian character was confessedly lowered by their
intercourse with the whites, and they were instigated both by their own
injuries and the arts of the French to make incursions into
Pennsylvania, the ‘Friends’ were still to them a sacred and inviolable
people. While the tomahawk and the scalping-knife were nightly doing
their dreadful work in every surrounding dwelling--theirs were
untouched; while the rest of the inhabitants abandoned their houses and
fled to forts for security,--they found more perfect security in that
friendship which the wisdom and virtue of Penn had conciliated, and
which their own disinterested principles made permanent.”
* * * * *
In endeavouring to conclude with a specimen of the elegant poem of
“William and Mary Howitt,” an unexpected difficulty of selection
occurs--it is a piece of continuous beauty that can scarcely be
extracted from, without injury to the stanzas selected; and therefore,
presuming on the kind indulgence of the amiable authors, it is here
presented entire:--