Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/81

less] William Penn. 49 and arrogant profligate, with a tendency to intermittent and ineffective tyranny. The mischief he did in both provinces was happily remedied by his successor, Robert Hunter, one of the ablest and most judicious in the list of colonial administrators. PENNSYLVANIA. In New Jersey we have seen a fresh religious force, that of Quakerism, brought into the sphere of colonial politics. Historians have written of William Penn as though he had been a religious enthusiast whose friend- ship with James II, in politics a despot and in religion a bigoted member of an alien Church, must either be explained away or accepted as evidence of unscrupulous opportunism. That view involves a mistaken conception of the characters alike of Penn and of his patron. The two men were in many respects unlike; but their views and characters found a meeting- point in their indifference to constitutional forms, in their inability to see that men might reasonably demand something more than good government, and might fairly ask for those securities which, under any change of rulers, would guarantee good government for the future. In New Jersey Penn was no more than one in a firm of Proprietors : his position did not give him that free hand which he required to carry out his theories as a constructive statesman. A better chance soon offered itself. He inherited a claim against the Crown for ,1 6,000. That debt might be paid in a cheap and easy fashion. The territory conquered from the Dutch included, as we have seen, a tract colonised by the Swedes on the south bank of the Delaware. Of that tract the greater portion was not included in the Duke of York^s second grant. It was included in the original patent of Maryland, but it was unoccupied; and to grant land twice over was no uncommon incident in colonial administration. The tract in question was in 1682 transferred to Penn in settlement of his claim. Penn's rights as a Proprietor were limited by three important restrictions, in which we can trace the effect of past colonial experience. The Crown was to have a veto on all legislation. In all legislation and administration which concerned revenue, the colony was to be treated as an integral part of the realm. There was to be an agent living in England, who might be called upon to explain any alleged infraction of the revenue laws. Penn's colony neither was nor was designed to be composed exclusively of Quakers. The Quaker element, however, undoubtedly preponderated ; and one at least of the Quaker tenets their abhorrence of war was to prove a serious hindrance on a future occasion, when it became needful that the colonists should be united against French and Indian enemies. The Quaker theory of the equality of all men in the eye of God was with Penn no vague dogma, but a practical belief which lay at the root of all his dealings with the savages. c. w. n. vii. CH. i.