Combative resistance, in religious differences, always gives the victor a right, or at least, an excuse, to slay. But Quakerism, a system of personal and religious independence and peace,--became slowly successful by the _vis inertiae_ of pa.s.sive resistance. All other sects were, more or less, combative;--Quakerism was an obstinate rock, which stood, in rooted firmness, amid a sea of strife:--the billows of faction raged around it and broke on its granite surface, but they wasted themselves--_not_ the rock! And this is a most important fact in the history of Religion in its development of society. All other sects lost caste, power or material, either by aggression or by fighting. But the Quaker said to the Prelate, the Puritan, and the Catholic, you may annoy us by public trials, by denial of justice, by misrepresentation, by imprisonment, by persecution, by the stake,--yet we shall stand immovable on two principles, which deny that G.o.d is glorified by warfare--especially for opinion. Our principles are, equality and peace--in the church and in the world. Equality is to make us humble and good citizens. Peace is to convert this den of human tigers into a fold, wherein by simply performing our duties to each other and to G.o.d, we may prepare ourselves for the world of spirits. You can persecute--_we_ can suffer. Who shall tire first? We will be victorious by the firmness that bears your persecutions; and those very persecutions, while they publish your shame, shall proclaim our principles as well as our endurance. They knew, from the history of Charles 1st, that the worst thing to be done with a bad king was to kill him; for, if the axe metamorphosed that personage into a martyr, the prison could never extinguish the light of truth in the doctrines of Quakerism![14]
You will pardon me, gentlemen, for having detained you so long in discussing the foundation of Maryland. The planting of your own state is familiar to you. It has been thoroughly treated in the writings of your Proud, Watson, Gordon, Du Ponceau, Tyson, Fisher, Wharton, Reed, Ingraham, Armstrong and many others. Can it be necessary for me to say a word, in Philadelphia, of the history of WILLIAM PENN;--of him, who, as a lawgiver and executive magistrate,--a practical, pious, Quaker,--_first_ developed in state affairs, and reduced to practice, the liberty and equality enjoined by his religion and founded on liberal christianity;--of him who _first_ taught mankind the sublime truth, that--
"Beneath the rule of men entirely great "The PEN _is mightier than the sword? Behold_ "The arch-enchanter"s wand,--itself a nothing!
"But taking sorcery from the master hand "To paralyse the Cesars! _Take away the sword_, "_States can be saved without it!_"
It would be idle to detail the facts of his life or government, for, not only have Pennsylvanians recorded and dwelt upon them until they are household lessons, but they have been favorite themes for French, British, Italian, German and Spanish philosophers and historians.
It was Penn to whom the charter of 1681 was granted, half a century after the patent issued to Cecilius Calvert. The instrument itself, has many of the features of the Maryland grant; but it is well known that the absolute powers it bestowed on the Proprietary, were only taken by him in order that he might do as he pleased in the formation of a new state, whose principles of freedom and peace, might, first in the World"s history, practically a.s.sume a national aspect.
I shall not recount the democratic liberalities of his system, as it was matured by his personal efforts and advice. Original, as he unquestionably was, in genius; bold as he was in resisting the pomp of the world, at a time when its vanities sink easiest and most corruptingly into the heart,--we may nevertheless, say, that the deeds and history of his time, as well as of the previous fifty years, had a large share in moulding his character.
In William Penn, the crude germs of religious originality, which, in Fox, were struggling, and sometimes almost stifling for utterance, found their first, ablest, and most accomplished expounder. He gave them refinement and respectability. His intimacy with Algernon Sidney taught him the value of introducing those principles into the doctrines of government;--and thus, he soon learned that when political rights grow into the sanct.i.ty of religious duties, they receive thereby a vitality which makes them irresistible. Penn, in this wise, become an expanded embodiment of Fox and Sidney; and, appropriating their mingled faith and polity, discarded every thing that was doctrinal and not practical, and realized, in government, their united wisdom. n.o.bly _in his age_, did he declare: "I know what is said by the several admirers of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, which are the rule of one, of a few, and of the many, and are the three common ideas of government when men discourse on that subject. But I choose to solve the controversy with this small distinction, and it belongs to all three:--_any government is free to the people under it, whatever be the frame, where the laws rule and the people are a party to those laws; and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, and confusion._"[15]
In these historical ill.u.s.trations, I have striven to show that Primitive Christianity was the basis of equal rights and responsibilities. The alleged defence of this christianity, in the land of its birth, gave rise to "holy wars," in which Feudalism and Chivalry originated.
Feudalism was the source of the strictest military dependence, as well as of manifold social perversions. The knight expanded into a lord,--the subject commoner dwindled to a soldier or a serf. Thus Feudalism and a great historical Church, grew up in aristocratic co-partnership over the bodies and souls of mankind, until the one, by the omnipotence of its spiritual authority, ripened into an universal hierarchy, while the other, by the folly of its "divine right," decayed into a temporal despotism that fell at the first blow of the heads-man"s axe. The reformation and revolution broke the enchanter"s wand; and, when the cloud pa.s.sed from the b.l.o.o.d.y stage, instead of seeing before us a magician full of the glories of his art and almost deceived himself, by the splendor of his incantations, we beheld a meagre and pitiful creature, who though blind and palsied, still retained for a while, the power of witch-like mischief. But his reign was not lasting. The stern Puritan,--the pioneer of Independence,--advanced with his remorseless weapon,--while quietly, in his shadow, followed the calm and patient Friend, sowing the seed of Peace and Good-Will in the furrows plowed by the steel of his unrelenting predecessor. And thus again, after ages of corrupt and desolating perversion, the selfish heart of man came humbly back to its original faith that Liberal Christianity is the true basis of enlightened freedom, and the only foundation of good and lasting government.
The bleak winds of March were blowing in Maryland, when Calvert conciliated and purchased from the Indians at Saint Mary"s; but Autumn was
"Laying here and there "A fiery finger on the leaves,"
when Penn, also, established a perfect friendship with the savages at Shackamaxon.[16]
Calvert, a protestant officer of the crown, became a catholic, and, retiring to private life, was rewarded by his king, with a pension, estates, and an American princ.i.p.ality;--Penn, the son of a British Admiral, and who is only accurately known to us by a portrait which represents him _in armor_, began life as an adherent of the Church of England, and having conscientiously, doffed the steel for the simple garb of Quakerism, was persecuted, not only by his government but his parent. Calvert took the grant of a feudal charter, and a.s.serting all its legislative and baronial powers, sought to fasten its Chinese influence, in feudal fixedness, on his colonists;--but Penn, knowing that feudalism was an absurdity, in the necessary equality of a wilderness, embraced his great authority in order "to leave himself and his successors no power of doing mischief, so that the will of one man might not hinder the good of a whole community."[17]
Calvert seems to have thought of English or Irish emigration alone;--Penn, did not confine himself to race, but sought for support from the Continent as well as from Britain.[18]
Calvert was enn.o.bled for his services;--Penn rejected a birthright which might have raised him to the peerage.
Calvert"s public life was antecedent to his American visit--Penn"s was almost entirely subsequent to the inception of his "holy experiment."
Calvert laid the foundations of a mimic kingdom;--Penn, with the power of a prince, stripped himself of authority. The one was naturally an aristocrat of James"s time; the other, quite as naturally, a democrat of the transition age of Sidney.
Calvert imagined that mankind stood still; but, Penn believed, that mankind _ever_ moves, or, that like an army under arms, when not marching, it is marking time.
While to Calvert is due the honor of a considerable religious advance on his age, as developed in his charter,--Penn is to be revered for the double glory of civil and _perfect_ religious liberty. Calvert mitigated man"s lot by toleration;--Penn expanded the germ of toleration into unconditional freedom.
Calvert was the founder of a Planting Province, mainly agricultural, and creative of all the manorial dependencies;--but Penn seems to have heartily cherished the idea of a great City, and of the commerce it was to gather and develope from a wilderness over which it was to stand as guardian sentinel. As farming was the chief interest of the one, trading, became, also, a favorite of the other; and thus, while the _transient_ trader visited, supplied, and left the native Indian free,--the _permanent_ planter settled forever on his "hunting grounds,"
and drove him further into the forest.
Calvert recognized the law of war;--Penn made peace a fundamental inst.i.tution. They both felt that civilized nations have a double and concurrent life,--material and spiritual;--but Calvert sought rather to develop one, while Penn addressed himself to the care of both.
Calvert"s idea was to open a new land by old doctrines, and to form his preserving amber around a worthless fly;--but Penn"s Pennsylvania was to crystalize around the novel and lucid nucleus of freedom.
Calvert supposed that America was to be a mere reflex of Britain, and that the heart of his native Island would pulsate here; but Penn, seeing that the future population of America, like the soil of the Mississippi Valley, would be an alluvial deposit from the overflow of European civilization, thought it right to plant a new doctrine of human rights, which would grow more vigorously for its transplanting and culture.
The germs of Civil and Religious freedom may be found elsewhere in the foundation of American provinces and colonies. I know they are claimed for the cabin of the Mayflower, the rock of Plymouth, and the sands of Rhode Island. But I think that William Penn is justly ent.i.tled to the honor of adopting them on principle, after long and patient reflection, as the seed of his people, and thus, of having taken from their introduction by him into this country, all the disparagement of originating either in discontent or accident. His plan was the offspring of beautiful design, and not the gypsey child of chance or circ.u.mstance.
History is to man what water is to the landscape,--it mirrors, but distorts in its reflection, and the great founder of Pennsylvania has suffered from this temporary distortion. But, at length, the water will become still, and the image will be perfect. Penn is one of those majestic figures that loom up on the waste of time, in the same eternal permanence and simple grandeur in which the Pyramids rise in relief from the sands of Egypt. Let no Arab displace a single stone!
APPENDIX No. I.
It is singular that the clause in the XXII section of Charles Ist"s charter to Lord Baltimore, relating to the interpretation of that instrument in regard to religion, has never been accurately translated, but that all commentators have, hitherto, followed the version given by Bacon. I shall endeavor to demonstrate the error.
The following parallel pa.s.sages exhibit the original Latin, and Bacon"s adopted translation:
ORIGINAL LATIN.
The 22nd section of the charter of Maryland, copied from Bacon"s Laws, wherein it was adopted from an attested copy from the original record remaining in the Chapel of Rolls in 1758:
"SECTION XXII. Et si forte imposterum contingat Dubitationes aliquas quaestiones circa verum sensum et Intellectum alicujus verbi clausulae vel sententiae in hae presenti CHARTA nostra contentae generari EAM semper et in omnibus Interpretationem adhiberi et in quibuscunque Curiis et Praetoriis nostris obtinere VOLUMUS praecipimus et mandamus quae praefato mod Baroni de BALTIMORE Haeredibus et a.s.signatis suis benignior utilior et favorabilior esse judicabitur Proviso semper quod nulla fiat Interpretatio per quam sacro-sancta DEI et vera Christiana Religio aut Ligeantia n.o.bIS Haeredibus et successoribus nostris debita Immutatione Prejudicio vel dispendio in aliquo patiantur:" &c. &c.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION.
Translation of the 22nd section of the charter, from Bacon"s Laws of Maryland, wherein it is copied from an old translation published by order of the Lower House in the year 1725:
"SECTION XXII. And if, peradventure, hereafter it may happen that any doubts or questions should arise concerning the true sense and meaning of any word, clause or sentence contained in this our present charter, we will, charge, and command, THAT Interpretation to be applied, always, and in all things, and in all our Courts and Judicatories whatsoever, to obtain which shall be judged to be more beneficial, profitable and favorable to the aforesaid now Baron of BALTIMORE, his heirs and a.s.signs: Provided always that no interpretation thereof be made whereby G.o.d"s holy and true christian religion, or the allegiance due to us, our heirs and successors, may, in any wise, suffer by change, prejudice or diminution:" &c.
&c.
It will be noticed that this _Latin_ copy, according to the well known ancient usage in such papers, is not punctuated, so that we have no guidance, for the purpose of translation, from that source.
The translation of this section as far as the words: "_Proviso semper quod nulla fiat interpretatio_," &c. is sufficiently correct; but the whole of the final clause, should in my opinion, be rendered thus:--
"Provided always that no interpretation thereof be made, whereby G.o.d"S HOLY RIGHTS _and_ the TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, or the allegiance due to us our heirs or successors, may, in any wise suffer by change, prejudice or diminution." Let me offer my reasons for this alteration:
1st, This new translation harmonizes with the evident grammatical construction of the Latin sentence, and is the easiest as well as most natural. The common version, given by Bacon: "G.o.d"S holy _and_ true CHRISTIAN religion,"--is grossly pleonastic, if not nonsensical. Among christians, "G.o.d"s religion," can of course, only be the "christian religion;" and, with equal certainty, it is not only a "true" religion, but a "holy" one!
2nd, The word _Sacrosanctus_, always conveys the idea of a _consecrated inviolability, in consequence of inherent rights and privileges_. In a dictionary, _contemporary with the charter_, I find the following definition,--_in verbo sacrosanctus._
"SACROSANCTUS: Apud Ciceronem dicebatur id quod interposito jurejurando sanctum, et inst.i.tutum erat idem etiam significat ac sanctus, _santo_.
_Tribunus plebis dicebatur sacrosanctus, quia eum nefas erat attingere, longe diviniori ratione Catholici appellamus ecclesiam Romanam sacrosanctam._ Calpinus Parvus;--seu Dictionarium Caesaris Calderini Mirani: _Venetiis_, 1618."
Cicero, _in Catil_: 2. 8.--uses the phrase--"Possessiones sacrosanctae,"
in this sense; and so does Livy in the epithet,--"Sacrosancta potestas,"
as applied to the Tribuneship; and, in the sentence,--"ut plebi sui magistratus essent sacrosanctae."
From the last sentence, in the definition given in the Venetian Dictionary of 1618, which I have cited in italics, it will be seen that the epithet had a peculiarly Catholic signification _in its appropriation_ by the Roman Church.