The Quaker Colonies | Page 6

petroleum, and iron that ever was given to a single proprietor. In
addition to giving Penn the control of Delaware and, with certain other
Quakers, that of New Jersey as well, the Crown placed at the disposal
of the Quakers 55,000 square miles of most valuable, fertile territory,
lacking only about three thousand square miles of being as large as
England and Wales. Even when cut down to 45,000 square miles by a
boundary dispute with Maryland, it was larger than Ireland. Kings
themselves have possessed such dominions, but never before a private
citizen who scorned all titles and belonged to a hunted sect that exalted
peace and spiritual contemplation above all the wealth and power of the
world. Whether the obtaining of this enormous tract of the best land in
America was due to what may be called the eternal thriftiness of the
Quaker mind or to the intense desire of the British Government to get
rid of these people--at any cost might be hard to determine.
Penn received his charter in 1681, and in it he was very careful to avoid
all the mistakes of the Jersey proprietary grants. Instead of numerous
proprietors, Penn was to be the sole proprietor. Instead of giving title to
the land and remaining silent about the political government, Penn's
charter not only gave him title to the land but a clearly defined position
as its political head, and described the principles of the government so
clearly that there was little room for doubt or dispute.
It was a decidedly feudal charter, very much like the one granted to
Lord Baltimore fifty years before, and yet at the same time it secured
civil liberty and representative government to the people. Penn owned
all the land and the colonists were to be his tenants. He was compelled,
however, to give his people free government. The laws were to be
made by him with the assent of the people or their delegates. In practice
this of course meant that the people were to elect a legislature and Penn
would have a veto, as we now call it, on such acts as the legislature
should pass. He had power to appoint magistrates, judges, and some
other officers, and to grant pardons. Though, by the charter, proprietor
of the province, he usually remained in England and appointed a deputy
governor to exercise authority in the colony. In modern phrase, he
controlled the executive part of the government and his people
controlled the legislative part.
Pennsylvania, besides being the largest in area of the proprietary
colonies, was also the most successful, not only from the proprietor's

point of view but also from the point of view of the inhabitants. The
proprietorships in Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and the
Carolinas were largely failures. Maryland was only partially successful;
it was not particularly remunerative to its owner, and the Crown
deprived him of his control of it for twenty years. Penn, too, was
deprived of the control of Pennsylvania by William III but for only
about two years. Except for this brief interval (1692-1694), Penn and
his sons after him held their province down to the time of the American
Revolution in 1776, a period of ninety-four years.
A feudal proprietorship, collecting rents from all the people, seems to
modern minds grievously wrong in theory, and yet it would be very
difficult to show that it proved onerous in practice. Under it the people
of Pennsylvania flourished in wealth, peace, and happiness. Penn won
undying fame for the liberal principles of his feudal enterprise. His
expenses in England were so great and his quitrents always so much in
arrears that he was seldom out of debt. But his children grew rich from
the province. As in other provinces that were not feudal there were
disputes between the people and the proprietors; but there was not so
much general dissatisfaction as might have been expected. The
proprietors were on the whole not altogether disliked. In the American
Revolution, when the people could have confiscated everything in
Pennsylvania belonging to the proprietary family, they not only left
them in possession of a large part of their land, but paid them
handsomely for the part that was taken.
After Penn had secured his charter in 1681, he obtained from the Duke
of York the land now included in the State of Delaware. He advertised
for colonists, and began selling land at 100 pounds for five thousand
acres and annually thereafter a shilling quitrent for every hundred acres.
He drew up a constitution or frame of government, as he called it, after
wide and earnest consultation with many, including the famous
Algernon Sydney. Among the Penn papers in the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania is a collection of about twenty preliminary drafts.
Beginning with one