XVI. 1671. "the hellish darkness and debauchery," of the univer- CHAP. sity of Oxford; he exposed the errors of the Roman Catholic church, and in the same breath pleaded for a toleration of their worship; and never fearing publicly to address a Quaker meeting, he was soon on the road to Newgate, to suffer for his honesty by a six months' 1670, imprisonment. "You are an ingenious gentleman,” said the magistrate at the trial; "you have a plentiful estate; why should you render yourself unhappy by associating with such a simple people ?"—" I prefer," said Penn, "the honestly simple to the ingeniously wicked." The magistrate rejoined by charging Penn with previous immoralities. The young man, with passionate vehemence, vindicated the spotlessness of his life. "I speak this," he adds, "to God's glory, who has ever preserved me from the power of these pollutions, and who, from a child, begot a hatred in me towards them." 66 Thy words shall be thy burden; I trample thy slander as dirt under my feet." From Newgate Penn addressed parliament and the nation in the noblest plea for liberty of conscience—a liberty which he defended by arguments drawn from experience, from religion, and from reason. If the efforts of the Quakers cannot obtain "the olive branch of toleration, we bless the providence of God, resolving by patience to outweary persecution, and by our constant sufferings to obtain a victory more glorious than our adversaries can achieve by their cruelties." to On his release from imprisonment, a calmer season 1671 followed. Penn travelled in Holland and Germany; 1673. then returning to England, he married a woman of extraordinary beauty and sweetness of temper, whose noble spirit" chose him before many suitors," and honored him with "a deep and upright love." As XVI. CHAP. persecution in England was suspended, he enjoyed for two years the delights of rural life, and the animating pursuit of letters; till the storm was renewed, and the imprisonment of George Fox, on his return from America, demanded intercession. What need of narrating the severities, which, like a slow poison, brought the prisoner to the borders of the grave? Why enumerate the atrocities of petty tyrants, invested with village magistracies, the ferocious passions of irresponsible jailers? The Statute Book of England contains the clearest impress of the bigotry which a national church could foster, and a parliament avow; and Penn, 1675. in considering England's present interest, far from resting his appeal on the sentiment of mercy, merited the highest honors of a statesman by the profound sagacity and unbiased judgment with which he unfolded the question of the rights of conscience in its connection with the peace and happiness of the state. It was this love of freedom of conscience which gave interest to his exertions for New Jersey. The summer 1677. and autumn after the first considerable Quaker emigra tion to the eastern bank of the Delaware, George Fox, and William Penn, and Robert Barclay, with others, embarked for Holland, to evangelize the continent; and Barclay and Penn went to and fro in Germany, from the Weser to the Mayne, the Rhine, and the Neckar, distributing tracts, discoursing with men of every sect and every rank, preaching in palaces and among the peasants, rebuking every attempt to inthrall the mind, and sending reproofs to kings and magistrates, to the princes and lawyers of all Christendom. The soul of William Penn was transported into fervors of devotion; and, in the ecstasies of enthusiasm, he explained "the universal principle" at Herford, in the XVI. court of the princess palatine, and to the few Quaker CHAP. converts among the peasantry of Kirchheim. To the peasantry of the highlands near Worms, the visit of 1678. William Penn was an event never to be forgotten. The opportunity of observing the aristocratic institutions of Holland and the free commercial cities of Germany, was valuable to a statesman. On his return to England, the new sufferings of the Quakers excited a direct appeal to the English parliament. The special law against Papists was turned against the Quakers; Penn explained the difference between his society and the Papists; and yet, in an age of Protestant bigotry, at a season when that bigotry was become a jealous frenzy, he appeared before a committee of the house of commons to plead for universal liberty of conscience. "We must give the liberty we ask ;"—such was the sublime language of the Quakers;-" we cannot be false to our principles, though it were to relieve ourselves; for we would have none to suffer for dissent on any hand." Defeated in his hopes by the prorogation and dissolu- 1679. tion of the parliament, Penn appealed to the people, and took an active part in the ensuing elections. He urged the electors throughout England to know their own strength and authority; to hold their representatives to be properly and truly their servants, to maintain their liberties, their share in legislation, and their share in the application of the laws. "Your well being"-these were his words" depends upon your preservation of your right in the government. You are free; God, and nature, and the constitution, have made you trustees for posterity. Choose men who will, by all just and legal ways, firmly keep and zealously promote your power." And as Algernon Sydney now "embarked with those XVI. CHAP. that did seek, love, and choose the best things," William Penn, with fearless enthusiasm, engaged in the election, and obtained for him a majority which was defeated only by a false return. 1680. But every hope of reform from parliament vanished. Bigotry and tyranny prevailed more than ever, and Penn, despairing of relief in Europe, bent the whole energy of his mind to accomplish the establishment of a free government in the New World. For that "heaven1682. ly end," he was prepared by the severe discipline of 27. life, and the love, without dissimulation, which formed Oct. the basis of his character. The sentiment of cheerful humanity was irrepressibly strong in his bosom ; as with John Eliot and Roger Williams, benevolence gushed prodigally from his ever-overflowing heart; and when, in his late old age, his intellect was impaired, and his reason prostrated by apoplexy, his sweetness of disposition rose serenely over the clouds of disease. Possessing an extraordinary greatness of mind, vast conceptions, remarkable for their universality and precision, and "surpassing in speculative endowments; "1 conversant with men, and books, and governments, with various languages, and the forms of political combinations, as they existed in England and France, in Holland, and the principalities and free cities of Germany, he yet sought the source of wisdom in his own soul. Humane by nature and by suffering; familiar with the royal family; intimate with Sunderland and Sydney; acquainted with Russel, Halifax, Shaftesbury, and Buckingham; as a member of the Royal Society, the peer of Newton and the great scholars of his age,-he 1 Testimony of Friends. Compare J. F. Fisher's just and exact tribute to Penn, in Private Life of William Penn. So too R. Tyson's XVI. valued the promptings of a free mind more than the CHAP awards of the learned, and reverenced the single-minded sincerity of the Nottingham shepherd more than the authority of colleges and the wisdom of philosophers. And now, being in the meridian of life, but a year older than was Locke, when, twelve years before, he had framed a constitution for Carolina, the Quaker legislator was come to the New World to lay the foundations of states. Would he imitate the vaunted system of the great philosopher? Locke, like William Penn, was tolerant ; both loved freedom; both cherished truth in sincerity. But Locke kindled the torch of liberty at the fires of tradition; Penn at the living light in the soul. Locke sought truth through the senses and the outward world; Penn looked inward to the divine revelations in every mind. Locke compared the soul to a sheet of white paper, just as Hobbes had compared it to a slate, on which time and chance might scrawl their experience; to Penn, the soul was an organ which of itself instinctively breathes divine harmonies, like those musical instruments which are so curiously and perfectly framed, that, when once set in motion, they of themselves give forth all the melodies designed by the artist that made them. To Locke,' "Conscience is nothing else than our own opinion of our own actions; " to Penn, it is the image of God, and his oracle in the soul. Locke, who was never a father, esteemed "the duty of parents to preserve their children not to be understood without reward and punishment; " Penn loved his children, with not a thought for the consequences. Locke, who was never married, declares marriage an affair of the senses; Penn reverenced woman as the object of fer 1 Essay on the Human Understanding, b. i. c. iii. s. 8. 2 Locke's Essay, b. ii. c. iii. s. 12. 3 Ibid. ii. xxi. 34. |