Sketch of the Settlement of Pennsylvania.
FAIN would I turn from this gloomy and uncertain prospect, so
disappointing to philanthropy, and so subversive of all the flattering
hopes and sanguine predictions of the poets and philosophers, who were
wont to look forward to a new Atalantis,
“Famed for arts and laws derived from Jove,”
in this western world. But I cannot quit the fond retrospect of what
once was in one favoured spot, without indulging a distant hope of what
may emerge from this dark disordered state.
The melancholy Cowley, the ingenious bishop of Cloyne, and many others,
alike eminent for virtue and for genius, looked forward to this region
of liberty as a soil, where peace, science, and religion could have room
to take root and flourish unmolested. In those primeval solitudes,
enriched by the choicest bounties of nature, they might (as these
benevolent speculators thought) extend their shelter to tribes no longer
savage, rejoicing in the light of evangelic truth, and exalting science.
Little did these amiable projectors know how much is to be done before
the human mind, debased by habitual vice, and cramped by artificial
manners in the old world, can wash out its stains and resume its
simplicity in a new; nor did they know through how many gradual stages
of culture the untutored intellect of savage tribes must pass before
they become capable of comprehending those truths which to us habit has
rendered obvious, or which at any rate we have talked of so familiarly,
that we think we comprehend them. These projectors of felicity were not
so ignorant of human nature, as to expect change of place could produce
an instantaneous change of character; but they hoped to realize an
Utopia, where justice should be administered on the purest principles;
from which venality should be banished, and where mankind should,
through the paths of truth and uprightness, arrive at the highest
attainable happiness in a state not meant for perfection. They “talked
the style of gods,” making very little account of “chance and
sufferance.” Their speculations of the result remind me of what is
recorded in some ancient writer, of a project for building a magnificent
temple to Diana in some one of the Grecian states. A reward was offered
to him who should erect, at the public cost, with most taste and
ingenuity, a structure which should do honour both to the goddess and
her worshippers. Several candidates appeared. The first that spoke was a
self-satisfied young man, who, in a long florid harangue, described the
pillars, the porticoes, and the proportions of this intended building,
seeming all the while more intent on the display of his elocution, than
on the subject of his discourse. When he had finished, a plain elderly
man came from behind him, and leaning forwards, said in a deep hollow
voice, “All that he has said, I will do.”
William Penn was the man, born to give “a local habitation and a name,”
to all that had hitherto only floated in the day-dreams of poets and
philosophers.
To qualify him for the legislator of a new-born sect, with all the
innocence and all the helplessness of infancy, many circumstances
concurred, that could scarce ever be supposed to happen at once to the
same person. Born to fortune and distinction, with a mind powerful and
cultivated, he knew, experimentally, all the advantages to be derived
from wealth or knowledge, and could not be said ignorantly to despise
them. He had, in his early days, walked far enough into the paths of
folly and dissipation, to know human character in all its varieties, and
to say experimentally, all is vanity. With a vigorous mind, an ardent
imagination, and a heart glowing with the warmest benevolence, he
appears to have been driven, by a repulsive abhorrence of the abuse of
knowledge, of pleasure, and pre-eminence, which he had witnessed, into
the opposite extreme; into a sect, the very first principles of which,
clip the wings of fancy, extinguish ambition, and bring every struggle
for superiority, the result of uncommon powers of mind, down to the dead
level of tame equality; a sect that reminds one of the exclusion of
poets from Plato’s fancied republic, by stripping off all the
many-coloured garbs with which learning and imagination have invested
the forms of ideal excellence, and reducing them to a few simple
realities, arrayed as soberly as their votaries.
This sect, which brings mankind to a resemblance of Thomson’s
Laplanders,
“Who little pleasure know, and feel no pain,”
might be supposed the last to captivate, nay, to absorb, such a mind as
I have been describing. Yet so it was: even in the midst of all this
cold humility, dominion was to be found. That rule, which of all others,
is most gratifying to a mind conscious of its own power, and directing
it to the purposes of benevolence, the voluntary subjection of mind, the
homage which a sect pays to its leader, is justly accounted the most
gratifying species of power; and to this lurking ambition, every thing
is rendered subservient by those who have once known this native and
inherent superiority. This man, who had wasted his inheritance,
alienated his relations, and estranged his friends; who had forsaken the
religion of his ancestors, and in a great measure, the customs of his
country; whom some charged with folly, and others with madness, was,
nevertheless, destined to plan with consummate wisdom, and execute with
indefatigable activity and immovable firmness, a scheme of government,
such as has been the wish, at least, of every enlarged and benevolent
mind, (from Plato downwards,) which has indulged speculations of the
kind. The glory of realizing, in some degree, all these fair visions,
was, however, reserved for William Penn alone.
Imagination delights to dwell on the tranquil abodes of plenty, content,
and equanimity, that so quickly rose like an exhalation in the domains
of this pacific legislator. That he should expect to protect the quiet
abodes of his peaceful and industrious followers, merely with a fence of
olive, (as one may call his gentle institutions,) is wonderful; and the
more so, when we consider him to have lived in the world, and known too
well, by his own experience, of what discordant elements it is composed.
A mind so powerful and comprehensive as his, could not but know, that
the wealth which quiet and blameless industry insensibly accumulates,
proves merely a lure to attract the armed spoiler to the defenceless
dwellings of those, who do not think it a duty to protect themselves.
“But when divine ambition swell’d his mind,
Ambition truly great, of virtuous deeds,”
he could no otherwise execute his plan of utility, than by the agency of
a people who were bound together by a principle, at once adhesive and
exclusive, and who were too calm and self-subdued, too benignant and
just, to create enemies to themselves among their neighbours. There
could be no motive but the thirst of rapine, for disturbing a community
so inoffensive; and the founder, no doubt, flattered himself that the
parent country would not fail to extend to them that protection, which
their useful lives and helpless state both needed and deserved.
Never, surely, were institutions better calculated for nursing the
infancy of a sylvan colony, from which the noisy pleasures, and more
bustling varieties of life were necessarily excluded. The serene and
dispassionate state, to which it seems was the chief aim of this sect to
bring the human mind, is precisely what is requisite to reconcile it to
the privations that must be encountered, during the early stages of the
progression of society, which necessarily excluded from the pleasures of
refinement, should be guarded from its pains.
Where nations, in the course of time, become civilized, the process is
so gradual from one race to another, that no violent effort is required
to break through settled habits, and acquire new tastes and
inclinations, fitted to what might be almost styled a new mode of
existence. But when colonies are first settled in a country so entirely
primitive as that to which William Penn led his followers, there is a
kind of retrograde movement of the mind, requisite to reconcile people
to the new duties and new views that open to them, and to make the total
privation of wonted objects, modes, and amusements, tolerable.
Perfect simplicity of taste and manners, and entire indifference to much
of what the world calls pleasure, were necessary to make life tolerable
to the first settlers in a trackless wilderness. These habits of
thinking and living, so difficult to acquire, and so painful when forced
upon the mind by inevitable necessity, the quakers brought with them,
and left, without regret, a world from which they were already excluded
by that austere simplicity which peculiarly fitted them for their new
situation. A kindred simplicity, and a similar ignorance of artificial
refinements and high seasoned pleasures, produced the same effect in
qualifying the first settlers at Albany to support the privations, and
endure the inconveniences of their novitiate in the forests of the new
world. But to return to William Penn: the fair fabric he had erected,
though it speedily fulfilled the utmost promise of hope, contained
within itself the principle of dissolution, and from the very nature of
the beings which composed it, must have decayed, though the
revolutionary shock had not so soon shaken its foundations. Sobriety and
prudence lead naturally to wealth, and wealth to authority, which soon
strikes at the root of the short lived principle of equality. A single
instance may occur here and there, but who can ever suppose nature
running so contrary to her bias, that all the opulent members of a
community should acquire or inherit wealth for the mere purpose of
giving it away? Where there are no elegant arts to be encouraged, no
elegant pleasures to be procured, where ingenuity is not to be rewarded,
or talent admired or exercised; what is wealth but a cumbrous load,
sinking the owner deeper and deeper into grossness and dulness, having
no incitement to exercise the only faculties permitted him to use, and
few objects to relieve in a community from which vice and poverty are
equally excluded by their industry, and their wholesome rule of
expulsion. We all know that there is not in society a more useless and
disgusting character than what is formed by the possession of great
wealth, without elegance or refinement; without, indeed, that liberality
which can only result from a certain degree of cultivation. What then
would a community be, entirely formed of such persons, or supposing such
a community to exist, how long would they adhere to the simple manners
of their founder, with such a source of corruption mingled with their
very existence? Detachment from pleasure and from vanity, frugal and
simple habits, and an habitual close adherence to some particular trade
or employment, are circumstances that have a sure tendency to enrich the
individuals who practise them. This, in the end, is “to give humility a
coach and six,” that is, to destroy the very principle of adhesion which
binds and continues the sect.
Highly estimable as a sect, these people were respectable and amiable in
their collective capacity as a colony. But then it was an institution so
constructed, that, without a miracle, its virtues must have expired with
its minority. I do not here speak of the necessity of its being governed
and protected by those of different opinions, but merely of wealth
stagnating without its proper application. Of this humane community it
is but just to say, that they were the only Europeans in the new world
who always treated the Indians with probity like their own, and with
kindness calculated to do honour to the faith they professed. I speak of
them now in their collective capacity. They, too, are the only people
that, in a temperate, judicious, (and, I trust, successful) manner, have
endeavoured and still endeavour to convert the Indians to Christianity;
for them, too, was reserved the honourable distinction of being the only
body who sacrificed interest to humanity, by voluntarily giving freedom
to those slaves whom they held in easy bondage. That a government so
constituted could not, in the nature of things, long exist, is to be
regretted; that it produced so much good to others, and so much comfort
and prosperity to its subjects while it did exist, is an honourable
testimony of the worth and wisdom of its benevolent founder.
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