Philadelphia (Repplier)/Chapter 2
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IT was on a quiet afternoon in the autumn of 1681 that three ships lay in London harbour, making ready for a protracted voyage, fraught with some danger and every possible discomfort. Past these vessels came the royal barge, its silken banners fluttering in the breeze; and the King, noticing the swift bustle of departure, asked what ships they were, and whither they were bound? On being told that they bore the first Quaker emigrants to Pennsylvania, Charles had the barge rowed closer, and gravely, yet with mirthful eyes, bestowed his princely blessing on the decorous groups, who stood, their heads covered, but their hearts filled with serious emotion, to receive it. They understood clearly enough that the good-natured monarch had always wished them well, and that the persecutions they had suffered were not of his contriving. Indeed, it is little wonder that both Charles and his less affable and less tolerant brother should have sincerely liked the Quakers, who seldom gave any trouble, took no part in public life, and shrank from the noisy quarrels of worldlings. With a strange indifference to science, to wit, to learning, and to literature, they combined a breadth of vision, a sane tolerance of humanity, and an instinctive knowledge of what we are apt to consider the principles of purely modern philanthropy. "Since the time of the primitive Christians," says Mr. Sydney Fisher, "there never had been such apostles of gentleness. They were a striking contrast to the Puritans, every one of whom was a restless politician, whose religion included a theory of civil government which he felt it his duty to enforce."
So Charles gave his blessing with the kindliest good-will to these innocent non-combatants, who, their hearts full of hope, their hands unstained by blood, set sail with the outgoing tide for the far-away shores of America. It would have been more picturesque had Penn accompanied them, but he remained in London, busy with the sale of land, and with schemes for the advancement of the colony. The three little ships carried with them in his place three commissioners, a plan of the proposed city, and a conciliatory letter to the Delaware Indians, who had always claimed these heavily wooded tracts as their favourite hunting-ground. Friendly Indians they were for the most part, who had been conquered years before and reduced to subjection by the victorious Five Nations, and who were, moreover, accustomed to the sight of white men dwelling within their territory. There was little trouble to be apprehended from them, unless goaded by unkindness into hostility, and the Quakers were not settlers likely to arouse the fierce passion of resentment in the Red Man's bosom. They regarded him, neither as an unwarranted interloper, which is our modern point of view, nor as accursed of God, and cut off from all mercy in Heaven or on earth, which was the gentle conviction of the Puritan. They made allowances for his being an Indian, since it had pleased God to create him one; and they conceived that he was not without some claim to the land which Providence had granted him for his own. These extraordinary sentiments—the strangest heresy ever yet carried from the Old World to the New—bore lasting fruit in the good-will shown to Pennsylvania's colony by its savage neighbours. The early history of the Quaker City is almost ignominious in its peacefulness, monotonous in its unvarying, uninteresting prosperity. By the side of infant Philadelphia, so quiet and so well behaved, the story of infant New Orleans reads like some long fairy tale, in which the picturesque, the marvellous, the sinister, and the lawless, contend on every glowing page for mastery.
Yet the decorous record of the little settlement on the Delaware is not without its sober charm, a charm to be sought for in minute detail and simple inci dent. With incredible speed, the colonists, who had first found shelter in caves along the river's bank, built themselves log cabins and frame houses, chilly, capacious, strong. The emigration increased rapidly. Twenty-three ships sailed from England to Pennsylvania in 1682, and by the close of 1683, three hundred and fifty-seven houses had been erected in Philadelphia. Already, though but three years old, it had become the city of homes. But the first child of English parents was born in a cave, afterwards used as a rude tavern, and called the "Pennypot." To this child, John Key, Penn presented a lot of ground, and he lived to be eighty-five years old, and was known as the "first born" to the day of his death, though by that time early traditions and landmarks were rapidly disappearing from the town. When Penn arrived in November, 1682, he found his colony so well advanced, its surroundings so tranquil and beautiful, that in his enthusiasm he pronounced the country worthy of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob; a land overflowing with the visible mercies of God. "Oh! how sweet is the quiet of these parts, freed from the anxious and troublesome solicitations, hurries, and perplexities of woeful Europe," he wrote joyously, and no doubt sincerely, being as yet new to the situation, and unaware of the persistence with which "woeful Europe" tugs at the heartstrings of an exile. The "fair mansion-house" of Pennsbury had not yet been begun, but he built the demure little Letitia House for his winter quarters, promising himself, doubtless, many years of peaceful
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and congenial labour in the city which owed him her existence. His letter of 1683, to the Free Society of Traders, gives unstinted praise to the new province; its game, its fruit, its abundant crops, its oysters "six inches long," its pure and wholesome water, (alas! alas!) and its charming climate, which we might imagine had altered strangely since those halcyon days, were it not for another letter—a private missive this time to Lord North—in which Penn ruefully confesses that "the weather often changeth without notice, and is constant almost in its inconstancy." "No climate at all," as M. Bourget wittily expresses it,—"only samples of weather."
The meeting of the first Assembly, which adopted Penn's code with many modifications, the unsuccessful attempt to settle the boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, and the famous treaty with the Indians at Shackamaxon engrossed the governor's attention. The treaty is one of those historic facts or fictions, the details of which we are taught to believe as children, and to doubt as adults, with the result that we are credulous or sceptical according to our mental attitudes. Those for whom it is the sole incident that emerges from the mist of long-forgotten lessons are naturally unwilling to relinquish a single circumstance, not even the broad blue sash, Penn's only emblem of authority. If there be no evidence beyond tradition for the support of the truth, there is no shadow of improbability, and there are no conflicting statements to give tradition the lie. The loss of the original document is of scant significance, for little importance was attached to it at the time, and many papers shared its fate in those early careless days. The fact that the speech assigned to Penn was really uttered by him twenty years later, is but an instance of the way in which history is made, the natural and admirable process by which anything that will harmonize is woven into the narrative. Nothing can be clearer than the story as it has come down to us,—the story of a great treaty made and kept. The Indians cherished its memory for generations; the Quakers were justly proud of a deed that did them infinite credit; and the English have always vied with Americans in honouring a compact which, as Voltaire lucidly remarked, was "the only treaty between savages and Christians that had not been ratified by an oath, and that was never broken."
When the English army occupied Philadelphia in 1777, a guard was placed before the "Treaty Elm," to preserve it from the evil chances of war. The picture by which West has so deeply offended antiquarians has at least familiarized many of us with that famous tree, and with all that happened beneath its spreading branches. Penn was, indeed, at the time, no corpulent old man in full-skirted coat and broad-brimmed hat; but tall, athletic, well formed, and, notwithstanding his Quaker creed, extremely fastidious about dress, especially about his curled and flowing wigs;—"the handsomest, best-looking, and liveliest of gentlemen," says an old chronicler, "affable and friendly with the humblest."
Friendly with the Indians he certainly was, winning their affection by his kindness, and their respect by his activity and endurance. The undeviating policy of conciliation which he pursued for years ensured the docility of the savages, and the consequent safety of an unarmed community, which went about its daily toil as unmolested as though it lived in the heart of civilization. There have not been lacking virtuous voices to protest against Penn's inadequate payment for land of which the Indians never realized the value; but as so few colonists were in the habit of paying anything at all, or of acknowledging any claim, save their own, to provinces granted them by the crown, it seems hardly worth while to save up our resentment for the one man who gave what was demanded.
It was not from Indians that Penn suffered his keenest disappointments, but from those whose lasting gratitude he had rashly hoped to win. Already the bickerings had begun which were destined to overshadow his life. Already he found it a difficult matter to please his colonists, to control the Assembly, to have his own way about anything. "Is it not the general history of colonies," says that garrulous old chronicler, John Watson, "to whine and fret like wayward children, to give immeasurable trouble and expense to rear them to maturity, and then to reward the parental care with alienation?" If this be true, Pennsylvania was certainly no exception to the rule. Penn loved the province he had founded, the goodly city he had helped to build. He hoped to make her beautiful as well as prosperous, and had dreamed of a noble river front along the Delaware, of a promenade and a public park, with the trees of the forest primeval spreading their mighty branches over the cooling waves. The steady encroachment of warehouses and shipping yards upon this river front, the inevitable triumph of
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the commercial over the picturesque, chagrined him deeply. But before ever the buildings rose frowning and ugly on the bank, there were more urgent anxieties to mar his peace of mind. Among them was the still unsettled boundary line, which promised endless trouble in the future, Lord Baltimore being a man loath to relinquish his territorial rights, and not easily moved by arguments or solicitations. It seemed Penn's wisest course to return to England, and lay the matter once more before the Privy Council. Other questions arose which required his presence in London. He had left his wife and family in the Old World, not without serious misgivings; for Guliema Maria, pious and beautiful though she was, had her share of gentle feminine weaknesses, all of which are hinted at very plainly in the long letter of instruction which Penn wrote for her guidance in his absence. He entreats her, for example, to be more regular at her meals; to have her dinner served promptly at the appointed hour; to "guard against encroaching friendships," which lead to lamentable waste of time; and, above all, to forbear grieving herself with careless servants;—excellent but futile advice, easier at any time to give than to obey. So back to "woeful Europe," which seemed a little less woeful after two years' absence, back to household cares and to graver issues went Penn in 1684. He intended to rejoin the colony within a twelvemonth. He remained in England nearly fifteen years.