William Penn's Model Colony--Sketch of the Founder of Pennsylvania--
Comparative Humanity of Quaker Laws--Modified Freedom of Religion--An
Early Liquor Law--Offences Against Morality Severely Punished--White
Servitude--Debtors Sold Into Bondage--Georgia Founded as an Asylum for
Debtors--Oglethorpe Repulses the Spaniards--Georgia a Royal Province.
Founded on principles of equity by a man who was eminently a lover of his
kind, Pennsylvania stood forth as a model colony, an ample and hospitable
refuge for the oppressed of every clime. William Penn believed in the
Golden Rule, and he sought to establish a state in which that rule would
be the fundamental law. Instead of stern justices growing fat on the fees
of litigation, he would have peace-makers in every county. He would treat
the Indian as of the same flesh and blood as the white, and would live on
terms of amity with red men embittered against the invaders of their
lands by many years of unjust encroachment and cruel oppression. His
object, Penn declared in his advertisement of Pennsylvania, was to
establish a just and righteous government in the province that would be
an example for others. He proposed that his government should be a
government of law, with the people a party to the making of laws. None,
he declared, should be molested or prejudiced in matters of faith and
worship, and nobody should be compelled at any time to frequent or
maintain any religious place of worship or ministry whatsoever. Trial by
jury was guaranteed; the person of an Indian was to be as sacred as that
of a white man, and in any issue at law in which an Indian should be
concerned, one half the jury was to be composed of Indians.
William Penn was well known both in England and on the Continent when he
received, in 1681, his grant of Pennsylvania from Charles II. in
discharge of a debt of about eighty thousand dollars, due by the crown to
Penn's father, Admiral Sir William Penn. The proprietor of Pennsylvania
had suffered in the cause of religious liberty and reform. He had been
confined in the Tower for writing heretical pamphlets, and been
prosecuted for preaching in the streets of London. He had traveled in
Holland and Germany as a self-appointed missionary of the Society of
Friends, and had not spared his own ease in pleading the cause of
persecuted Quakers everywhere. When, therefore, he proposed to found a
colony in America, his name alone was enough to attract a host of
followers. Many immigrants flocked to Pennsylvania even before Penn
himself had arrived there, and the settlers of Delaware, who had been
anxious as to their future under the charter of the Duke of York, gladly
came under the rule of one whose name was a synonym of equity. Under a
spreading elm the Indians met the proprietor of Pennsylvania and made a
covenant with him that was equally just to the white man and to the
native--a covenant which, it is said, was never forgotten by the
aborigines.
Nothing is more significant of the spirit and the motives which guided
the early settlers than the humanity of their laws, as compared with the
code of England. The humane and enlightened sentiment as expressed in
legislation, was not peculiar to Pennsylvania. In Rhode Island, also,
that other colony founded on the principle of religious liberty, the
first spontaneous code enacted by the exiles was more than a century in
advance of European ideas and statutes, and in Rhode Island, as in
Pennsylvania, the ideal was compelled to give way to the hard and
practical pressure of dominating English influence, and of contact with
the rougher sort of mankind, attracted to these shores by the hope of
gain or the fear of punishment at home.
The Quakers began by proclaiming a modified freedom of religion. They
declared, "That no person now, or at any time hereafter, dwelling or
residing within this province, who shall profess faith in God the Father,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, and in the Holy Spirit, one God
blessed for Evermore, and shall acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the
Old and New Testament to be given by Divine Inspiration, and, when
lawfully required, shall profess and declare that they will live
peaceably under the civil government, shall in any case be molested or
prejudiced for his or her conscientious persuasion, nor shall he or she
be at any time compelled to frequent or maintain any religious worship,
place or ministry whatsoever, contrary to his or her mind, but shall
freely and fully enjoy his or her Christian liberty in all respects,
without molestation or interruption." Of course this manifestly excluded
unbelievers in the Trinity, and left a door open for controversy as to
what books were included in the Sacred Scriptures. Furthermore, the law
against blasphemy might easily have been used as a weapon of persecution,
providing, as it did, that whoever should "despitefully blaspheme or
speak loosely and profanely of Almighty God, Christ Jesus, the Holy
Spirit or the Scriptures of Truth, and is legally convicted thereof,
shall forfeit and pay the sum of ten pounds for the use of the poor of
the county where such offence shall be committed, or suffer three months
imprisonment at hard labor."
Practically, however, entire freedom of worship existed in Pennsylvania.
The same liberal spirit breathed through the Quaker code, while at the
same time due care was taken to protect the morals of the people.
In view of the severe liquor law now in force in Pennsylvania, it may
be of interest to recall an early enactment regulating the traffic. It
was provided in 1709, that "For preventing of disorders and the mischiefs
that may happen by multiplicity of public houses of entertainment, _Be
it enacted_, That no person or persons whatsoever, within this province,
shall hereafter have or keep any public inn, tavern, ale-house,
tippling-house or dram shop, victualling or public house of entertainment
in any county of this province, or in the City of Philadelphia, unless
such person or persons shall first be recommended by the justices in the
respective County Courts, and the said city, in their Quarter Sessions or
Court of Record for the said counties and cities respectively, to the
Lieutenant-Governor for the time being, for his license for so doing,
under the penalty of five pounds." Tavern keepers permitting disorder in
their places of entertainment were subject to revocation of license.
There was a marked disposition in those days to visit with severity
offences against morality, especially when the detected culprits were
females; though males were not spared when sufficient proof could be
brought of their guilt. A woman concealing the birth of a child, found
dead, and evidently born alive, was held to be guilty of murder, unless
she could prove that the death was not her doing. This unjust presumption
remained in force for many years, until, under the influence of kinder
and Christian sentiment, the law was changed, the burden of proof placed
upon the prosecution and the presumption of innocence extended to the
defendant. The penalty for violating the marriage obligation was the
lash; the letter "A" being branded on the forehead for the third offence.
A singular provision of law was that a married woman having a child when
her husband had been one year absent, should be punished as a criminal,
but to be exempt from punishment if she should prove that her husband had
been within the period stated "in some of the Queen's colonies or
plantations on this continent, between the easternmost parts of New
England and the southernmost parts of North Carolina."
The penalties inflicted on servants point in a remarkable manner to the
wonderful advance in the condition of menial and common laborers within
the past hundred years. Pennsylvania, in the treatment of the laborer,
was at least as lenient as any other colony, but the laws of the time
appear hideously harsh and oppressive to us of to-day. The early colonial
statutes provided that, "For the just encouragement of servants in the
discharge of their duty, and the prevention of their deserting their
master's or owner's service, be it enacted, that no servant bound to
serve his or her time in this province, shall be sold or disposed of to
any person residing in any other province or government without the
consent of said servant, and two justices of the peace of the county
wherein such servant lives or is sold, under the penalty of ten pounds to
be forfeited by the seller." What a picture this conjures up of some
poor, orphaned and half-starved colonial Oliver Twist, dragged by his
master into the presence of pompous justices, and frowned into a
hesitating consent to exchange the evils with which he was familiar for a
fate whose wretchedness he knew not of!
Ten shillings was to be paid for returning a runaway servant, if captured
within ten miles of the servant's abode; if over ten miles, then the sum
of twenty shillings was to be paid to the captor on delivery of the
fugitive to the sheriff, the master to pay, in addition to the reward,
five shillings prison fees, and all other disbursements and charges. The
penalty for concealing a runaway servant was twenty shillings, and any
one purchasing any goods from a servant without the consent of the master
or mistress was fined treble the value of the goods, to the use of the
owner, "and the servant, if a white, shall make satisfaction to his or
her master or owner by servitude after the expiration of his or her time,
to double the value of said goods, and if the servant be a black, he or
she shall be severely whipped in the most public place in the township in
which such offence was committed."
It may be seen from the above that common labor up to the time of the
Revolution was virtually that of serfs, without discrimination of color
or nativity. The supply of such labor came largely from Great Britain and
Ireland, and to some extent from the other colonies and from Africa. Poor
debtors also were sold into servitude, a law of 1705 providing that
"debtors should make satisfaction by servitude not exceeding seven years,
if a single person and under the age of fifty, and three years or five
years if a married man, and under the age of forty-six years." What the
family of the married debtor were to do for a living while he was in
servitude, legislation failed to suggest. Probably, in many instances,
they were glad to accompany the husband and father into serfdom. Warrants
could not be served on Sunday, one day of the seven being reserved when
the wretched debtor might rest in security, and the hunted criminal
forget that he was outlawed.
* * *
While other colonies were founded as places of refuge for Christians
oppressed on account of their religion, Georgia had its origin in the
humane desire of General James Edward Oglethorpe to establish an asylum
for poor debtors, with whom the prisons of England were over-crowded, the
colony also to be a haven for the Protestants of Germany and other
continental States. The proprietors of the Carolinas surrendered their
charters to the crown in 1729, and King George II was, therefore, free to
grant, June 9, 1732, a charter for a corporation for twenty-one years "in
trust for the poor," to found a colony in the disputed territory south of
the Savannah, to be called Georgia, in honor of the king. The trustees,
appointed by the crown, possessed all the power both of making and
executing laws. The people of Charleston, South Carolina, gave welcome to
Oglethorpe and his immigrants, for South Carolina had been greatly
harassed by the Spaniards to the south, and by the powerful tribes of
Indians who occupied a large portion of the proposed colony. General
Oglethorpe laid the foundation of the future State on the site of
Savannah, and notwithstanding grievous restrictions on the ownership of
land, the colony attracted many settlers from England, Scotland and
Germany. The Spaniards invaded Georgia in 1742 with a fleet of
thirty-five vessels from Cuba and a land force three thousand strong.
Oglethorpe had but a small body of troops, chiefly Scotch Highlanders,
but by courage and strategy he inflicted a sanguinary defeat on the
Spaniards at the place called the "Bloody Marsh." Ten years later, in
1742, Georgia became a royal province, and secured the liberties enjoyed
by other American provinces under the crown.
SECOND PERIOD.
The Struggle for Empire.