INTRODUCTION
statecraft. His reading, as shown by the series of notebooks which he kept from 1863 to 1916, wide in variety and scope, embracing science, theology, poetry and American and European history, in sources often not accessible to historians, in the French, German, Dutch, Latin, Spanish, English and other languages, his familiarity with the origin and development, laws and customs of many peoples, combined with a rare power of analysis, mental integrity and directness of method, no doubt, would have made the chapters contemplated rich in fundamental criticism and constructive suggestion. Bishop Darlington has portrayed him as an idealist and a radical. If in part and at times he was both, as the following pages show, he had also a firm faith in the wisdom of holding fast to that which is good. Increasing physical weakness and suffering prevented the writing of the two additional chapters which he had in contemplation.
When it became known to the public that Governor Pennypacker had left an autobiography, a number of officials and prominent citizens of Pennsylvania, moved no doubt by their knowledge of the untoward fate that has overtaken so many similar life records in the hands of unhappy editors, united in a letter addressed to his family in urgent phrase requesting that the life narrative be published exactly as written, “unaltered, unexpurgated and unedited.”
Beyond the verification of certain dates, titles, names and occasionally a minor incident and the elimination of a few references and some repetitions caused by the long interruptions to the writing, which would have been done by the author himself had not illness and death prevented, there has been no such editing of the autobiography as the signers of the letter, perhaps, feared might occur. No such editing was ever contemplated.
It will be seen that the analysis is essentially of policies and of principles and that the criticism is applied to con-
