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©uaiterigm mti politics 
 
By ISAAC SHARPLESS, LL. D. 
 
 A QUAKER EXPERIMENT 
 IN GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Popular Edition, two volumes in one, 12mo, 
 cloth, 560pages, postpaid, $1.50. 
 
 Illustrated Popular Edition, containing all 
 the matter and illustrations of the Hojver- 
 ford Edition, two volumes in one, 12mo, 
 cloth, 612 pages, postpaid, $$,00. 
 
 FERRIS & LEACH, Publishers. 
 
QUAKERISM AND 
 POLITICS 
 
 By ISAAC SHARPLESS, LL. D. 
 
 President of Haverford College 
 
 FERRIS & LEACH 
 
 29 South Seventh Street 
 1905 
 
^I^HJ 
 
 '/c 
 
 COPYKIGHT, 1905, BY FBRKIS (Sl LEACH. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 These papers and addresses have been written for 
 publication or delivery within a few years past and 
 are now collected. For the most part they relate to 
 features of early Pennsylvania History not usually 
 emphasized. As a whole they are intended to show 
 that the foundation principles of the colony, on which 
 it greatly prospered, — ^liberty, peace, justice to 
 Indians and negroes, simplicity and fidelity in gov- 
 ernment, — were logical outgrowths of the Quaker 
 habit of mind and doctrine. 
 
 Whether men in business and politics can succeed 
 and at the same time obey the dictates of pure 
 morality is a question which troubles many people. 
 Possibly a little light is thrown upon it by these 
 papers. 
 
 The same statements would seem properly to have 
 a place in more than one essay; hence repetitions exist 
 
6 Preface. 
 
 which in a connected narrative would be unpar- 
 donable. 
 
 The great political revolution in Philadelphia of 
 the present month, in which Friends were prominent 
 far out of proportion to their members, came too late 
 to point certain obvious morals. If for no other pur- 
 pose, it is interesting as disproving a popular idea that 
 they are " non-resistants " when that word is used in 
 reference to supine submission to the powers of evil. 
 
 I. S. 
 
 Havebford, Pennstlvania. 
 November, 1905. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 A Government of Idealists 17 
 
 The Causes of Pennsylvania's Ills 50 
 
 The Improvement of Pennsylvania Politics 65 
 
 The Friend in Politics 79 
 
 A Colonial Peace Controversy Ill 
 
 The Welsh Settlers of Haverford 141 
 
 How the Friends Freed Their Slaves 159 
 
 The Friends' Meeting 179 
 
 The Basis of Quaker Morality 202 
 
A GOVEEISTMENT OE IDEALISTS* 
 
 A few years ago, in this suburban village of Bryn 
 MawT, the proprietor of a " speak-easy " essayed to 
 do business on the Lancaster Pike. An official of 
 a local organization was entrusted with its treas- 
 ury, and requested to uproot the illegal enterprise. 
 The only available method which presented itself was 
 to employ a detective, gather evidence, and in the 
 fulness of time make the arrest and take the case to 
 court. This was successfully done, and a year in jail 
 was probably something of a deterrent to others with 
 similar ambitions. It is the sort of enforcement of 
 law Avhich is assumed to mark a proper spirit in a 
 moral commimity. And yet, as day by day the detec- 
 tive in the guise of a laborer related the lies he had 
 told, the young men he had enticed there to drink, the 
 confidences he had violated, for all of which he was 
 receiving his financial reward, it became a serious 
 question whether the man who was selling a little beer 
 and whiskey, a purely artificial crime, or the official 
 who was paying another to violate some of the funda- 
 mental principles of morality, was in reality the 
 greater sinner. Yet by some such processes many of 
 
 * This paper was read as the " Founders' Lecture " in Bryn 
 Mawr College, 1905. 
 
18 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 our proceedings in the interests of justice and good 
 government are daily carried on. 
 
 This illustration may give an idea of the difficulty 
 of applying abstract ethics to matters of government 
 which are usually determined rather by the necessi- 
 ties and utilities of the day. 
 
 But if there is anything in Quaker morality funda- 
 mentally distinctive, it is a belief that there are eter- 
 nal principles of right and wrong, which may not be 
 violated no matter how attractive and beneficial the 
 results of the violation may seem to be; that there 
 is an overshadowing moral law as imperative as the 
 law of gravitation before which all utilitarian, consid- 
 erations must take subordinate place; that righteous- 
 ness must be done whatever the consequences, and 
 that evil must be avoided whatever the risk, and that 
 in this higher field of pure morality concession must 
 not be made to weakness and imperfection and tem- 
 porary circumstances. 
 
 For instance, war. War involves lying, stealing, 
 killing, hatred, revenge, dissoluteness; therefore it 
 cannot be right, says the Quaker, and arguments 
 drawn from seeming necessity or State advantage 
 fall to the ground. The Creator of the moral law 
 knows what is best for man, and by always following 
 his righteous decrees at whatever cost, the real 
 progress of humanity is best subserved. Whatever 
 is right is expedient, which is Paley's dictum reversed. 
 
A Government of Idealists. 19 
 
 I am not now commending or condemning this 
 position, for this lecture is historical and not ethical. 
 I am stating it at the beginning, because I think that 
 it explains the merits and the difficulties of the Friend 
 when he attempts to govern. He simply, if con- 
 sistent, cannot do a multitude of things which gov- 
 ernments at this time, though it must be said with 
 continually decreasing emphasis, demand. 
 
 Is it possible to manage a State on this Utopian 
 theory? There has never been but one serious at- 
 tempt to approximate to it, and that was the " Holy 
 Expei'iment" — as he called it — of William Penn. 
 We will briefly analyze its constitution and develop- 
 ment, and trace wherein it seemed to succeed and 
 wherein it seemed to fail. 
 
 Penn was one of a little band of ardent republi- 
 cans who, in the unpromising time of the Stuart 
 kings, held views far in advance of anything possible 
 in the crystallized institutions of his own country. 
 When in the payment of an old debt which Charles 
 II. had contracted to his father. Admiral Sir William 
 Penn, he received the grant of Pennsylvania with 
 full powers to form a government to suit himself, the 
 opportunity came as it does not come to one man in 
 a century to create his ideal commonwealth, and to 
 weave into it with almost a free hand his cherished 
 principlfs of human right and privileges. 
 
 Would they work? Men said they would not. 
 
20 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 Penn himself was not qioite sure, and called the trial 
 an experiment, and yet into that experiment he 
 launched his whole fortune, his future chances for 
 preferment, the reputation of his religious society, 
 and the problem of the availability of its principles 
 to meet the practical wants of humanity. 
 
 At the root of these principles lay the belief that 
 to every man is given directly a conscious manifesta- 
 tion of God's will, which does not supersede the ex- 
 ercise of his own judgment and energy, but which in 
 the higher realm of worship and ministry is supreme, 
 and which clarifies his judgment and guides his 
 energy, whenever its conditions are fulfilled, in the 
 ordinary affairs of life. As the prophetic work of 
 the world is to be done by this Divine inspiration, and 
 as men and women everywhere might be the re- 
 cipients of it, the value of the individual became 
 transcendent. Artificial ranks went down to the 
 ground, thou was a good enough pronoun for anyone, 
 the Quaker would bow to no one, and his hat was left 
 on his head as a token of equality in the presence of 
 king and protector, judge and priest. 
 
 Penn was not only an exponent, but a leader and 
 a teacher of these revolutionary theories. He had 
 been in jail for them, he had written folios in advo- 
 cacy of them, and he could not do otherwise than put 
 them in practice when he led his Quaker colony to 
 the virgin soil of his Delaware possessions. " I 
 
A Government of Idealists. 21 
 
 would found a free colony for all mankind that shall 
 go thither," he said. 
 
 Before he came over he gathered into one docu- 
 ment his ideas of a constitution. This is a manuscript, 
 in his own handwriting, now in the library of the 
 Pennsylvania Historical Society, and which was never 
 published till 1896. It decreed liberty of conscience, 
 government by a popularly elected Assembly, which 
 must obey the popular will, the initiative and the 
 referendum (much as they now exist in Switzerland), 
 prohibition of the retail sale of liquor in taverns and 
 ale houses, and the extinction of many customs like 
 imprisonment for debt, capital punishment for minor 
 offenses, and the evils of prison management so con- 
 spicuous then in England. ISTo provisions were made 
 for any warlike operations, or for any oaths. 
 
 This constitution never went into effect, but it was 
 the basis for that of the following year, with which 
 the colony started, and which, twice modified by the 
 force of the practical necessities of government, led 
 the way to that of lYOl, which was the great charter 
 of the province for seventy-five years, when it went 
 down with the whole colonial fabric in the throes of 
 the Revolutionary War. This will bear a more de- 
 tailed examination. 
 
 The first clause, as always in Penn's charters, de- 
 creed religious liberty to an extent hitherto unknown 
 in any instrument of government in the world, except 
 
22 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 among the little handful of people who made up the 
 colony of Rhode Island. No person who professed 
 to believe in an Almighty Grod was to be molested or 
 interfered with or made to support any form of wor- 
 ship whatever, and no person who professed to be- 
 lieve in Jesus Christ should be excluded from any 
 official station. This sounds very natural, possibly 
 a little illiberal to us Americans to-day, but to appre- 
 ciate its significance we must look at the condition of 
 the idea of toleration. 
 
 That idea came into England about 1611 as an im- 
 portation from Holland by the despised Anabaptists, 
 or Baptists, as we now call them. It involved a 
 State church, with other religions tolerated, as we 
 see it in England to-day. It had a little vogue, espe- 
 cially among persecuted sects, but prior to 1640 it 
 was nothing but a dream. Roger Williams, also a 
 Baptist, announced the doctrine in his " Bloody 
 Tenent of Persecution for the Cause of Conscience," 
 in 1644, with much force, liberality and learning, 
 and in his New England colony he put in practice not 
 only toleration but religious liberty. For it is a 
 long step from toleration — an established church 
 supported by public money which everybody must 
 contribute — to religious liberty and equality with no 
 State forms whatever. It is exactly the step which 
 separates England of to-day from America of to-day, 
 giving them the restlessness over tithes and support 
 
A Government of Idealists. 23 
 
 of ehurcli schools by taxes, so distressing to manjf 
 tolerant and conscientious Englishmen, and from 
 which we are free. 
 
 But the England of the Stuart times was far be- 
 hind this. Dissenters were in jail by the thousands. 
 They could not hold office or vote, or serve on juries, 
 or be admitted to the universities. At certain times 
 they could not worship together in companies of 
 more than five. They were hounded and driven 
 about, and made to feel at every turn their social and 
 political inferiority. Under the Conunonwealth it 
 was not much better. For an Episcopal estabhsh- 
 ment was substituted a Presbyterian one, and " New 
 Presbyter was but old Priest writ large." An 
 act of this reformatory period decreed — so runs the 
 statute — " that any man denying the doctrine of the 
 Trinity or of the Divinity of Christ, or that the books 
 of the Bible are the ' Word of God,' or the resurrec- 
 tion of the body, or a future day of judgment, shall 
 suffer the pain of death." 
 
 The toleration act of William and Mary, of later 
 date than the charter of Penn, but which he had 
 large influence in passing, removed their actual 
 physical sufferings, but not their political disabili- 
 ties. 
 
 JSTor, save in Ehode Island and a little time in 
 Maryland, could any light or guidance come from the 
 American colonies. Massachusetts and Connecticut 
 
24 Quakerism, and Politics. 
 
 had their established congregational churches. 
 Membership was a necessary qualiiication to vote or 
 hold office. Up to 1691 barbarous persecution of 
 dissenters went on. Episcopalians, Baptists and 
 Quakers were imprisoned and banished, and four es- 
 pecially troublesome members of the latter sect were 
 hanged on Boston Common. In JSTew York the Epis- 
 copal Church, though a small minority of the popula- 
 tion, was established and supported by money col- 
 lected from all, though the Dutch worship was pro- 
 tected by the Treaty of Breda. Catholics were ban- 
 ished. In New Jersey, after 1702, liberty of con- 
 science was proclaimed except for Papists and Quak- 
 ers. In Maryland, which under Catholic rule had 
 allowed large liberty of worship, the English Church 
 was established in 1696, and the Catholics themselves 
 disfranchised. Virginia allowed no dissent; all who 
 did not bring their children to be baptized by the 
 priests of the established church were subject to fine 
 or imprisonment. Taking the Sacrament according 
 to the rites of the same church was a necessary pre- 
 liminary to a seat in the legislative Assembly in the 
 Carolinas; while Georgia adopted the restrictions on 
 ISTon-conformists estabhshed by the so-called Tolera- 
 tion Act of England. 
 
 Except by Roger Williams, the broad principles of 
 religious liberty were nowhere grasped. Each sect 
 objected to persecution, or disabilities, but it was be- 
 
A Government of Idealists. 25 
 
 cause it held the truth and the others did not, and to 
 establish this truth and crush out error was its nor- 
 mal duty. The English Puritans in New England 
 did not found an asylum for religious liberty, but a 
 reservation to establish their own ideas. " There is 
 no room in Christ's triumphant army," Longfellow 
 makes their minister, John Norton, to say, " for 
 tolerationists." 
 
 It required no little courage for Penn, in the face 
 of the universal reprobation of the time, to pledge 
 himself: "Because the happiness of Mankind de- 
 pends so much upon the enjoying of Liberty of their 
 Consciences, as aforesaid, I do hereby solemnly de- 
 clare, promise and grant for me, my heirs and as- 
 signs, that the first article of this charter, relating to 
 liberty of Conscience, and every part and clause 
 therein, according to the true intent and meaning 
 thereof shall be kept and remain without any altera- 
 tion, inviolably forever." 
 
 Penn might thus solemnly pledge himseK and his 
 heirs, but a higher power came in as a factor. In a 
 few years the king's command required every Assem- 
 blyman and other official to sign a text abjuring a 
 belief in the mass, transubstantiation and papal 
 supremacy. They all took it, to Penn's disgust, 
 though it is pretty hard to see how it was to be 
 avoided, as they could do it honestly. Catholics 
 were thus prohibited from ofiice holding. Alone 
 
26 Quaherism and Politics. 
 
 among the colonies, however, Pennsylvania resolute- 
 ly refused to prohibit the Catholic worship, and the 
 little church of St. Joseph continued its ministrations 
 all through the colonial days. Liberty of conscience 
 became a keynote in Pennsylvania through all the 
 provincial time until it was " writ large " in Ameri- 
 can institutions, in the Declaration of Independence 
 and in the Federal Constitution, by the consent of all. 
 That it was so placed is simply the testimony that 
 within one hundred years all the colonies had 
 occupied the Pennsylvania position. 
 
 The second article of Penn's Charter of 1701 was 
 scarcely less momentous. It decreed that an Assem- 
 bly should be chosen on the first day of October for- 
 ever, that it should choose its own officers, be the 
 judge of the qualifications of its own members, and 
 adjourn itself and have " all other powers and 
 privileges of an Assembly according to the rights of 
 the free-born stibjects of England, and as is usual in 
 any of the King's Plantations in America." 
 
 This, too, seems to us a very simple provision, so 
 used are we to our Federal and State legislatures sit- 
 ting under just such rules. And yet it was the same 
 centurv which had seen the Civil War in Enarland for 
 these rights and others springing from them, and 
 which at this very time seemed likely to lose them by 
 the unconditioned restoration of Charles 11. It was 
 the same century in which the king of England had 
 
A Oovernment of Idealists. 27 
 
 declared, " Kemember that Parliaments are alto- 
 gether in my power for their calling, sitting and dis- 
 solution, and therefore, as I find the fruits of them 
 to be good or evil, they are to continue or not to 
 be ; " when members were called from their seats and 
 committed to the Tower for plainly speaking their 
 judgment; when no Parliament was called for eleven 
 years, and ship money and star chamber were used 
 illegally to extort money not voted by Parliament; 
 when even the Lord Protector, chosen as a protest 
 against these very evils, used his " purge " to carry 
 the point, and ruled with a Parliament from which 
 nearly all independence had been excluded. Even 
 now in England it is possible for a minister to govern 
 for years by a Parliament elected for a special pur- 
 pose, and which does not represent the people. 
 
 These usurpations were fresh in Penn's mind. He 
 reprinted with a liberal introduction the Magna 
 Charta and other charters of English liberty, lest the 
 distant colonists should forget their rights, and he 
 plainly declared, " I propose that which is extra- 
 ordinary, to leave myself and my successors no power 
 of doing mischief." He had the Assembly decree a 
 franchise, twice as liberal as Connecticut, the most 
 democratic of the other colonies, and with ten times 
 the voting power of old England. All through these 
 seventy-five years of provincial Pennsylvania the 
 free Assembly stood for the people, and wrung from 
 
28 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 proprietor and crown one concession after another of 
 liberty and privilege. It made many mistakes, and 
 often ungraciously demanded more than was reason- 
 able, but it made the province so free and so satisfied 
 that she went into the Revolution with reluctance, 
 and failed to catch the spirit of independence which 
 stirred the New Englanders and Virginians under 
 their more difficult charters. 
 
 The third clause of the Constitution of 1701 
 related to the manner of electing officers, and 
 the fourth gave the power of veto to the 
 governor, who was also the proprietor. This 
 meant no harm under William Penn, but his sons 
 were by no means broad-minded philanthropists, 
 but rather farmers of a great domain for pecuniary 
 profit. They deputed their veto power to a lieu- 
 tenant, and lived much in England. Vetoes became 
 frequent and embarrassing. But the resources of 
 the Assembly were equal to the occasion. They 
 alone could vote this deputy a salary. Thus, in 
 1743, they had a refractory governor to deal with. 
 He would not sign bills which they had much at 
 heart, and they would forget to place an item for his 
 salary in the appropriation bill. He nursed his 
 wrath in poverty for a time, but finally showed signs 
 of giving way. A little money was voted him. He 
 signed a bill, and the Assembly responded with equal 
 generosity. He yielded the main contention, and all 
 
A. Government of Idealists. 29 
 
 arrears were paid. He was permanently reclaimed 
 and lived happily with them ever afterwards. 
 
 The fifth clause gave a criminal the same rights to 
 witnesses and counsel as the prosecution, and the 
 sixth prevented the Governor and his council from 
 determining any matter of property which properly 
 belonged to the courts. The use of the courts as 
 instruments of terrorizing criminals and the extor- 
 tion of money by executive process could never exist 
 in Pennsylvania as they were in Penn's own time 
 existing in England. 
 
 The seventh declared that no person could keep a 
 tavern unless he were recommended by the county 
 justices as of proper character, a process beyond 
 which we have not yet advanced. 
 
 The eighth safeguarded the rights of inheritance 
 of the wife and children of a suicide in his estate, and 
 prohibited the forfeiture to the Governor of the 
 property of a person killed by casualty or accident. 
 To appreciate the need of these seemingly useless 
 provisions we must make a brief excursion into Eng- 
 lish law. 
 
 That law held that if a suicide has previously com- 
 mitted a felony, or if he acts through anger or ill- 
 will, his lands escheat and his chattels are forfeited 
 to the crown ; but if he acts from " weariness of life 
 or impatience of pain," his lands descend to his heirs 
 and his chattels are forfeited. In all cases it was 
 
30 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 adjudged by most authorities as a case of murder and 
 treated accordingly. 
 
 In the case of an accidental death, a very ancient 
 custom decrees the forfeiture of the moving thing 
 which caused the death. Thus in Exodus: " If an ox 
 gore a man then the ox shall be surely stoned." Un- 
 der the name of " deodand " in the Middle Ages the 
 moving thing was to be sold for the repose of the soul 
 of the victim, or in pious uses among the poor to 
 appease the wrath of God. Later it was forfeit to 
 the feudal lord or the king. Here is an old illustra- 
 tion: "As if a man being upon a cart, carrying fagots 
 and binding them together, fall down by the moving 
 of one of the horses in the cart, and die of it, both 
 that and all the other horses in the cart and the cart 
 itself are forfeit." Deodands, then, were simply 
 goods forfeited as the result of accident involving no 
 criminality or even necessarily carelessness. 
 
 These old laws, both as to suicides and deodands, 
 stood in England till the time of Victoria, about 
 1845, all the time working their unjust effect upon 
 the heirs of the unfortunate victims. Their prohi- 
 bition in Penn's charter thus acquires its signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 One other clause prohibits the amendment of the 
 charter except by the consent of the Governor and 
 SLX-sevenths of the legislature. The whole charter 
 covers but two or three pages of ordinary print, and 
 
A Oovernment of Idealists. 31 
 
 is suggestive quite as much from what it omits as 
 from what it contains, as, for instance, the treatment 
 of the natives and questions of war and oaths. 
 
 It is the Indian policy of Penn which has been 
 most eulogized. The Treaty under the Shacka- 
 maxon elm tree has been immortalized by Voltaire 
 in print and by West on canvas. Yet history com- 
 pels the admission that no treaty such as we usually 
 have in our thoughts, by which Penn bought a great 
 State of the Indians, ever was held. He bought lit- 
 tle sections here and there from various Indian tribes 
 as the settlers demanded the space, extending from 
 one creek to another, and back into the country as 
 far as a man could walk in a day or two days. When 
 two tribes claimed the same territory he bought of 
 both. He explained the contract in full, satisfied 
 every reasonable objection, was always manifestly 
 open and honest, and as might be expected, met with 
 an open and honest response. Thus as a bit of local 
 history, we have this record of the council in 1685: 
 " Read a complaint of the inhabitants of Haverford 
 against the Indians for the rapine and destruction of 
 their hogs." The Indian chiefs were sent for, and 
 they quickly settled the marauders. Thus it is that 
 the best of terms were maintained notvdthstanding 
 individual worries on both sides, and not a shred of 
 sharp practice was ever charged against William 
 Penn and the elders that outlived him. So the 
 
32 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 miicli-laiided treaty, if not exactly historic, is worth 
 its place as a svBibol of fair treatment of natives who 
 elsewhere were goaded into resistance and bloody 
 reprisals. 
 
 Was this the cause of Indian peace on the colonial 
 frontier? Parkman says, skeptically: "Had the 
 Quakers planted their settlement on the banks of the 
 St. Lawrence, or among the warlike tribes of New 
 England, it may well be doubted whether their shak- 
 ing of hands and assurances of tender regard would 
 long have availed to save them from the visitations 
 of the scalping knife." John Fiske more recently 
 adopts the same view. While giving full credit to 
 what he calls Quaker justice, he adds : " Neverthe- 
 less, it seems to me quite clear that in the long peace 
 enjoyed by Pennsylvania the controlling factor was 
 not QiTaker justice, but Indian politics." 
 
 The opinions of such careful students are worthy 
 of all consideration. The historical causes of any 
 event are often so complicated that there are abun- 
 ant opportunities for speculation as to which one 
 among manj' produced it. We may readily admit 
 that the circumstances were peculiarly favorable for 
 Penu's Experiment. His colony was practically se- 
 cure from French attack by sea. It did not touch 
 the French possessions in Canada. There were 
 friendly provinces north and east and south of it. Its 
 Indians were in a state of semi-vassalage to the Iro- 
 
A Government of Idealists. 33 
 
 quois, and were living, not contentedly, perhaps, but 
 actually, under the imputation of being " women." 
 
 Whether these conditions would have secured 
 peace without the addition of " Quaker justice " is a 
 matter upon which opinions may properly differ. 
 Also whether " Quaker justice " would have tri- 
 umphed under less favorable conditions — ^if, for in- 
 stance, Penn had secured a grant m JSTew England — 
 is a problem admitting of various answers. 
 
 The most reasonable seems to me to be an affirma- 
 tive answer. The Indian qualities were those of sav- 
 ages. Their treachery and cruelty to enemies were 
 extreme, but the general testimony is that they were 
 faithful in their friendships. So say Heckewelder 
 and Zeisberger, who lived with them and knew them 
 well from the standpoint of missionaries; so also says 
 General W. H. Harrison, from the standpoint of an 
 Indian fighter: "A long and intimate knowledge of 
 them in peace and war, as enemies and friends, has 
 left upon my mind the most favorable impressions 
 of their character for bravery, generosity and fidelity 
 to their engagements." 
 
 Indians, like white men in war, did not considei 
 the guilt of the individual, but attacked without dis 
 crimination all members of the opposing party 
 When the war paint was on, and the red tomahawl 
 was unsheathed, every white was an enemy, thougl 
 even then Indians have again and again discriminated 
 
tl 
 
 34 Quakerism and Politics. ^ 
 
 in favor of a friend. They acknowledged no inter- 
 national laws shielding non-combatants, and their 
 warfare was extreme in its barbarity, and without 
 respect of persons. When, however, they were un- 
 provoked; when they had been treated with fairness 
 and kindness, and had not exhausted the ordinary 
 resources of their diplomacy; when, according to 
 their code, they were still friends and allies, 
 they were faithful to their engagements, and 
 war arguments were iised upon them in vain. 
 Traditions, as binding with them as the writ- 
 ten treaties of the whites, carried down from 
 generation to generation the sacredness of the 
 ties of friendship. " In commemoration of 
 these conferences (with William Penn)," says 
 Heckewelder, " they frequently assembled together 
 in the woods in some shady spot, as near as possible 
 similar to those where they used to meet their 
 brother Mignon, and there laid all his ' words ' or 
 speeches with those of his descendants on a blanket 
 or clean piece of bark, and with great satisfac- 
 tion went successively over the whole. This prac- 
 tice (which I have frequently witnessed) continued 
 until the year 1Y80, when the disturbances which 
 then took place put an end to it, probably forever." 
 Every piece of wampum stood imperishably for a 
 certain transaction. Again and again its associa- 
 tions were rehearsed in the presence of the young 
 
A Oovernment of Idealists. 35 
 
 braves, and they were exhorted to be faithful to the 
 obligations their elder brethren had taken upon 
 themselves. Nothing would relieve them except 
 such violent treatment as would break its sacred 
 validity. It seems, therefore, not at all certain that 
 the bonds of gratitude, friendship and fidelity to en- 
 gagements would not have been sufficient to have 
 kept the Indians friendly, in the face of internecine 
 wars and French intrigue, had the whites everywhere 
 shown the uprightness of William Penn and his 
 friends. 
 
 The French, who treated them better than the 
 English, had but little cause to complain of the faith- 
 lessness of their allies, and the Iroquois, who were 
 " robbed by land speculators, cheated by traders, and 
 feebly supported in their constant wars with the 
 French," were yet staunch in their loyalty to the 
 Dutch and their successors, the English. If stress is 
 laid upon the fact that Pennsylvania Indians were 
 '' women," it must be remembered that no warriors 
 were more fearless or cruel when the " Walking Pur- 
 chase " and other knaveries had in their minds can- 
 celed their obligations to the provincial government. 
 They were the fiercest of the border ruffians, and 
 brought their old enemies and feudal lords to terms. 
 
 Quaker justice prevailed and Indian peace resulted 
 — and yet the Pennsylvania idea involved something 
 more than peace when peace rested on justice. It in- 
 
36 Quaherism and Politics. 
 
 volved peace in the face of unjust attack — peace as 
 a principle of eternal moraKty — peace when the In- 
 dians were scalping on the frontier, and the Erench 
 privateers were on the Delaware; when the question 
 whether England or Erance should control the new 
 world was at stake; when war was declared, and the 
 legislature was asked to appropriate money and buy 
 guns and arm troops. The Eriends could only con- 
 trol their own membership, and they always granted 
 to those who thought differently on this crucial mat- 
 ter the right to their own course of action. Even, it 
 must be admitted, they were down in the bottom of 
 their hearts glad, when the lack of scruples of others 
 relieved them from a serious dilemma. Eor Penn 
 had accepted with his charter from King Charles, the 
 rights of a Captain-General Avith ample powers, 
 rights which he could not exercise himself, for he had 
 written much against wars and fightings, and in 1693 
 had proposed a Diet of Nations, with a central par- 
 liament to settle disputes, a result which is just now 
 a realized accomplishment at The Hague. So he 
 appointed non-Quaker deputies to do the martial 
 work which the king commanded- — that is, an occa- 
 sional impotent proclamation of war against Erance 
 or Spain, or a commimication to the Assembly to vote 
 money for some naval or military attack, which he 
 did not expect them to grant. 
 
 It was different with that body — always with a 
 
A Government of Idealists. 37 
 
 Quaker majority from 1682 to 1756. That major- 
 ity could not escape the responsibility. They were 
 elected as peace men, though often the voters who 
 elected them were not peace men themselves. 
 Sometimes they voted money " for the king's use," 
 and if war purposes and peace purposes were so 
 inextricably blended that they could not be sure 
 how their money went, they felt freed from respon- 
 sibility, though they did extort from a governor a 
 promise that their money " should not be dipt in 
 blood." Once they voted to supply " wheat and 
 other grain " to feed the Indians, and Franklin says 
 made no serious protest when the " other graia " was 
 construed by the governor to mean gunpowder. 
 When a lot of border ruffians came in from the Sus- 
 quehanna and encamped in Germantown, with a 
 threat to exterminate a tribe of Moravian Indians in 
 the care of the province and then in Philadelphia, 
 their young men took up arms and warded off the at- 
 tack, and their elders, after some show of opposition, 
 did not condemn them. They drew the line between 
 police and military protection, the former being di- 
 rected, they said, against those who knew they were 
 violating both human and divine laws, and were per- 
 sonally deserving of all they got, and the latter 
 against many who were innocent of wrong-doing, 
 even conscientious in the means they took to accom- 
 
38 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 plish what to them was a worthy end. To shoot 
 down such people with such convictions seemed an 
 immoral act. 
 
 And yet with all their evasions and explanations in 
 minor detail, they were reasonably true to their 
 principle, though it was often a heavy burden. Sup- 
 ported by the German sects which had many of the 
 same beliefs, they for seventy years wove it into the 
 fabric of their commonwealth, meeting each issue as 
 it arose, retaining popular support and sending men 
 to office whose abilities and integrity were unchal- 
 lenged. 
 
 Liberty was as much of an experiment in 1682 as 
 peace. In a century it won its place among our dis- 
 tinct American institutions. The other virtue has 
 had no such rapid triumph, but he who reads the 
 signs of the times in the advocacy of arbitration will 
 have but little dotibt of its ultimate acceptance. 
 
 Other testimonies of perhaps less general import 
 have become acknowledged principles of civilization. 
 As early as 1716 the Friends cautioned their mem- 
 bers to avoid lotteries. Soon the subject became one 
 of annual inquiry, and those who indulged came 
 under the censure of the meeting. 
 
 It was after the Eevolution, and especially in the 
 prosperous times following the adoption of the Fed- 
 eral Constitution, that the ubiquity of lotteries was 
 most conspicuous. " There was a wheel in every 
 
A Government of Idealists. 39 
 
 city and in every to"wn large enough to boast of a 
 court-house or jail." * All improvements were made 
 by their means, school houses, public offices, bridges 
 and roads, churches and colleges. The University 
 of Pennsylvania and Princeton College had their lot- 
 teries. Many a church edifice owes its origin to 
 Federal capital was promoted by huge national lot- 
 teries. Many a church edifice owes its origin to 
 them. It is true there were some protests. It was 
 claimed that artisans were drawn from their work 
 and steady habits by the enticement of the wheel; 
 that many a home was demoralized, and that for one 
 person who seemed to prosper a dozen were sunk into 
 poverty. Yet the sanction of great names, and the 
 tangible effects in enterprises accomplished, con- 
 tinued to justify their use, and it was well into the 
 last century before States began to make prohibitory 
 laws. ISTow they are forbidden in every part of the 
 Union, and the Federal mails are closed against 
 them. 
 
 Prom all this the Priends escaped. No meeting or 
 school or enterprise of theirs was ever the result of 
 lotteries. It might also be said that individually 
 they were clear of participation in them. Por the 
 annual inquiry was rigid and honest, and the ticket 
 purchaser must have kept his transaction very secret 
 if his case was not taken up by the Monthly Meet- 
 ing. 
 
 * McMaster. 
 
40 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 I The long-standing contest against oaths is another 
 I interesting development. The original idea that all 
 loaths should be forbidden in the Province had been 
 given up out of deference to the vievrs of those who 
 considered them essential. So the expedient of mak- 
 ing them optional came in, and is now general. The 
 only hardship resulting is that those who have a con- 
 science against them cannot hold an office the duties 
 of which include administering them. 
 
 But while most people seem to be satisfied with 
 this liberty of choice, indications are not lacking that 
 the civilized world will come to the original position 
 of Penn and his associates. 
 
 Milton says that the nature of an oath consists in 
 '' calling God to witness the truth of what we say 
 with a curse upon ourselves, either implied or 
 expressed, should it prove false." The imprecatory 
 clause is the final one, " So help me God." This 
 means, not a prayer to God to aid me in speaking the 
 truth, but a renunciation of God's pardon and help 
 in the day of judgment if the truth is not spoken (or 
 the deed performed). In the multiplicity of cases in 
 which an oath or its equivalent is taken in judicial 
 procedure and business life, this awful curse is called 
 for unthinkingly and irreverently on trifiing occa- 
 sions. The habit of careless swearing is thus begot- 
 ten, and the oath, by breaking do^vn the taker's sense 
 of reverence for truth, becomes an aid to false state- 
 
A Government of Idealists. 41 
 
 ments rather than the reverse. JSTo one assumes that 
 an affirmation is less binding than an oath, provided 
 the same penalties are attached to violation. The 
 imprecation is, therefore, not necessary to secure fidel- 
 ity, and the whole mass of procedure based on its en- 
 forcement of the veracity or faithfulness of the wit- 
 ness or ofiicial seems unnecessary. Any reference to 
 God may also be objected to on the ground of the 
 inexpediency of using lightly the name of the Deity. 
 There are, besides, perfectly veracious agnostics 
 whose testimony has been excluded because they are 
 un-willing to state categorically that they believe in 
 God. The safe and easy rule would be to require a 
 simple afiirmation or declaration in every case, affix- 
 ing to falsehood the penalties now attached to per- 
 jury. 
 
 Constitutional difficulties stand in the way of this 
 radical change, but as a step towards it the law 
 enacted in Maryland, in 1898, is suggestive and 
 valuable. " The form of oath to be taken and ad- 
 ministered in this State shall be as follows : ' In the 
 presence of Almighty God I do solemnly promise (or 
 declare,)' etc., and it shall not be lawful to add to 
 the oath, ' So help me God,' or any imprecatory 
 words w-hatever." This is hardly an oath at all in 
 the common definition of the word. It is practically 
 the form used in early Pennsylvania. 
 
 So with the oft-told story of slavery abolition. The 
 
42 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 last negroes held by Quaker masters were freed dur- 
 ing the Revolutionary "War, and in 1680 first among 
 the States she passed an abolition law, to be followed 
 in a few months by Massachusetts. 
 
 " Thus," Bancroft sums it up, "did Penn perfect 
 his government. An executive dependent for its 
 support on the people ; all subordinate officers elected 
 by the people; the judiciary dependent for its exist- 
 ence upon the people; all legislation originating ex- 
 clusively in the people; no forts, no armed force, no 
 militia; no established church; no difference of rank; 
 and a harbor open for the reception of all mankind 
 of every nation, of children of every language and 
 every creed; could it be that the invisible power of 
 reason would be able to order and restrain, to pun- 
 ish crime and to protect property ? " 
 
 It was a government of idealists, but of practical 
 ones. They had taken risks when they applied what 
 they thought were the principles of pure morality to 
 government, but good fortune, or, as they thought, 
 a good Providence, was propitious and they pros- 
 pered. As Andrew Hamilton, the great lawyer of 
 the Colony, said in 1Y37, it was not to their fertile 
 land, or great rivers, or physical advantages of any 
 sort that they owed their prosperity, but " to the 
 Constitution of Mr. Penn." The first settlers were 
 the Quaker sectarians seeking exemption from bitter 
 persecution and disability in England, who filled the 
 
A Government of Idealists. 43 
 
 southeastern comer. Then came the sympathetic 
 sects of Germany, kindly intelligent people, with 
 learned leaders, like Pastorius, Kelpius and Saner. 
 Then the masses from the Palatinate, ravaged by war 
 and starved beyond endurance, who, an ancient ac- 
 count says, looked into each others' eyes and said, 
 " Let us go to Pennsylvania, and if we die, we die." 
 They came by the thousands to the State where there 
 would be no wars, so that the province, so far as num- 
 bers were concerned, was as much German as British 
 at the outbreak of the Revolution. Then the Scotch, 
 settled a century before in the north of Ireland, 
 whose leases were now running out, and who feared 
 the establishment of Episcopacy among them, came 
 in other thousands to the frontiers of the State where 
 their beloved Presbyterianism would never be in- 
 vaded by state churches. ~No other colony on the 
 Atlantic seaboard grew so rapidly, and, though a 
 half century behind the others in time of settlement, 
 at the date of the Eevolution it led them all in num- 
 bers, and this growth of common people was directly 
 due, as Hamilton has said, " to the Constitution 
 of Mr. Penn." 
 
 There are many unkind reflections thrown by oth- 
 ers at the proverbial " slowness " of Philadel- 
 phians. I have even heard that a judicial decision 
 has decreed that it is not murder to kill one, because 
 he is dead already. It was not, however, only com- 
 
44 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 mon people, — ^mild, non-resistant Quakers, and phleg- 
 matic Germans and uncouth Scotch-Irishmen — who 
 were drawn to Pennsylvania by its liberal policy. 
 The leaders of thought of America came there be- 
 cause thought was free. A group of scientists, 
 Tranklin, Priestley, Rittenhouse, Bartram, Eush, 
 Marshall, Audubon, JSTuttall and others, gathering to- 
 gether in such institutions as the American Philo- 
 sophical Society, still in honored existence, created 
 a progressive scientific spirit in an atmosphere of real 
 academic freedom. The capital city itself was the 
 largest, best-governed, most modern of any on the 
 Atlantic Coast. Idealistic institutions brought pros- 
 perity, and with it intellectual alertness and moral 
 keenness of perception, and if slowness is now a mer- 
 ited reprobation, it has grown up since the Revolu- 
 tion, and as the result of causes not associated with 
 the principles of the province. 
 
 And yet if we go back over the seventy-four years 
 of Quaker domination, it is very evident that these in- 
 stitutions did no t work themselves out vidthout a large 
 amountof shrewd political manipulation. At first, 
 when all were Priends, they could afford to divide 
 and struggle, city against country, aristocrat against 
 democrat, for the management of affairs; then fol- 
 lowed (1710 to 1740) a golden era, when everything 
 was in harmony — ^no Indian wars, no calls for troops. 
 
A Government of Idealists. 45 
 
 abounding prosperity, quiet and economical govern- 
 ment which suited alh A great Quaker political ma- 
 chine was built up. It is useless in this day to cry 
 out against machines in politics. The man without 
 a party is hopeless, and as in industry and labor, char- 
 ity and church, so in politics, organization has come 
 in response to the undeniable demand of the time for 
 efficiency. During this thirty years' peace the 
 Friends had everything their own way. The Ger- 
 mans did not much vote, and when they did, it was 
 for their Quaker allies. The Scotchmen had not come 
 in very large numbers, but they instinctively took the 
 opposite side from their doctrinal antipodes; for they 
 were Calvinists in the Church and fighters in the 
 State. They triumphed in the Revolution, but their 
 time had not yet come. 
 
 Then came the troublous years, for a decade and a 
 half foUovsdng 1740, when there were wars and still 
 more rumors of wars. Governor George Thomas, 
 appointed by Thomas Penn, tried to force an appro- 
 priation for England's quarrels with Spain and 
 IVance, from the Quaker Assembly. A great 
 pamphlet war followed, in which the merits and im- 
 possibilities and limitations of a government without 
 armed troops were discussed in every cofEee house 
 and country tavern of the province. If any curious 
 student wishes to read it he vrall find it in the Colonial 
 
46 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 Records of the Governor's Council and the Votes 
 of the Assembly — and let him remember that, like 
 the speeches in Congress to-day, it was intended 
 quite as much for public as for official perusal. When 
 matters were thus stirred up, came a street fight, with 
 sailors beating up the enthusiasm for the Governor 
 and hard-fisted Germans from the country for the 
 Quakers, and then the election, and in both street 
 fight and election the Quakers triumphed. Though 
 by this time they only constituted a small minority 
 of the population, 40,000 out of 220,000, Dr. 
 William Smith, the Provost of the University of 
 Pennsylvania, tells us, yet they never failed to secure 
 almost an unanimous control of the Legislature. 
 They did this by the aid of the German vote and the 
 power of their well-organized political machine. No 
 way of overcoming this seemed possible to the learned 
 doctor, except to disfranchise all non-English speak- 
 ing people, prohibit the German almanac of Chris- 
 topher Sauer, and make all Quakers iaeligible for 
 office by the imposition of an oath instead of an 
 affirmation. These measures would have done it 
 effectually, but the Friends themselves rendered 
 them unnecessary. 
 
 In 1Y55 Braddock's army went down before Port 
 Duquesne. The Indians, incited by English knavery 
 and Prench intrigue, were let loose on the frontiers, 
 and tomahawk and scalping knife did their bloody 
 
A Government of Idealists. 47 
 
 work. In the midst of this the election came off, with 
 bitterness and wild charges on both sides. When the 
 smoke cleared away, twenty-eight of the thirty-six 
 Assemblymen were Friends. Even the border coun- 
 ties sent them up. They appropriated money for 
 forts, for provisions for the English troops, for 
 suffering frontiersmen, and to win back the alienated 
 natives. This was as far as they would go, and when 
 in the spring of 1756 the Governor declared war 
 against the French and Indians, as he was constitu- 
 tionally empowered to do, they resigned their seats, 
 and this was the end of Perm's Holy Experiment. 
 
 "Because an institution has a moral basis, it does 
 not therefore do away with the need of wisdom and 
 skill in management. Speaker Eeed has defined a 
 statesman " as a successful politician who is dead." 
 Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore 
 EoOsevelt have been excellent politicians. They 
 have skillfully adapted means to ends. They have 
 made friends where they could, and placated enemies 
 where the enemies could command votes. They did 
 not live on a distant height, and say to the people, 
 " If you need my services, rise up and ask them." 
 They said in effect, '"' I want to be President, and I 
 will use all decent means to get the place." Neither, 
 on the other hand, did they, as is said of certain as- 
 pirants for Congressional honors, allow their con- 
 stituents to dictate their principles. They had prin- 
 
48 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 ciples, by which they stood, but there must be " give 
 and take " in politics, the use of effective methods, 
 yielding something to get more, trades and bargains 
 and subserviency to the organization, within certain 
 Kmits. One can imagine even a moral detective, an 
 ethical Sherlock Holmes, who by shrewdness and 
 keen insight succeeds in his trade, and is a valuable 
 and satisfactory ally of progress and justice. And 
 yet the early Pennsylvanians asked. Is not all 
 this limited when it comes up against the moral 
 law, and do not shrewdness and opportunism and 
 expediency cease to have a place when that inexorable 
 command is heard, " Thou shalt not ! " ? 
 
 Early Pennsylvania as an experiment is worth 
 more attention than it has received. There were 
 many weaknesses which have not been brought out in 
 this paper. The basis of morality was probably de- 
 fective in many points. Except Penn and a very few 
 others, the people did not rise to a full comprehen- 
 sion of the importance of the history they were creat- 
 ing. They were often opportunists, as we are still 
 when we hire detectives to lie for us when we want 
 to stop the illegal sale of whiskey. They violated 
 their oAvn principles dozens of times. And yet it is 
 true that for three-score years and ten they did carry 
 on a government, and a good one, based measurably 
 on these idealistic conditions. Eor three generations 
 they struggled for principles, and willingly went 
 
A Government of Idealists. 49 
 
 down at the end rather than violate them; and rather 
 remarkably the world has been coming largely to 
 their view-point. 
 
 It is not so much the establishment of any special 
 theory of government that colonial Pennsylvania 
 stands for. It stands for fidelity to ideals in the face 
 of apparent disaster. It says, " O ye of little faith, 
 do the right, and some day the right will justify it- 
 self and you." 
 
 Some of Penn's principles, as civil and religious 
 liberty, we have built into our political edifice, and 
 we cease to question their places there. To some we 
 do the homage of asserting their applicability to the 
 purer conditions of the future, too timid to do what 
 we know to be right, and set them to work now wdth 
 confidence in their inherent vitality. We forget that 
 truth makes its own way if given a chance, and that 
 out of our own failures often come the successes of 
 the future. These successes will never be produced 
 by waiting for better circumstances, but they are 
 brought on by Holy Experiments, where with faith 
 and courage right principles are set to work in the 
 midst of a scoffing and perverse generation. 
 
THE CAUSES OE PENNSYLVANIA'S ILLS * 
 
 That Pennsylvania was settled by Quakers, and 
 that her present political condition is a subject of 
 grave solicitude to her best friends within and with- 
 out the State, are statementsi which cannot be con- 
 troverted. The attempt to connect them by a chain 
 of cause and effect is a tempting project of historical 
 inquiry. Political conditions, like a rainstorm or a 
 cold wave, do not arise spontaneously, but the causes 
 are often too remote or too complicated to make caus- 
 ation evident or speculation profitable. 
 
 In common parlance Philadelphia is the Quaker 
 City, and its representatives, whether in political con- 
 ventions or ball fields, are Quakers. In some occult 
 way, the characteristics of city and State, green shut- 
 ters, rectangular streets, building societies, coal 
 mines, the Pennsylvania Railroad, John Wanamaker 
 and Matthew Stanley Quay, are logical descendants 
 of George Fox. To this list, according to " A Penn- 
 sylvanian " in the October " Atlantic," we must add 
 
 * This paper was published in the Atlantic Monthly of Jan- 
 uary, 1902, in reply to an article entitled, " The Ills of Penn- 
 sylvania," of prior date, which attributed the evil political 
 condition of the State to the non-militant habits impressed 
 upon it by its Quaker founders. The paper is here reprinted 
 Tvith the kind assent of the publishers. 
 
The Causes of Pennsylvania's Ills. 51 
 
 the political iniquities as coining directly from the 
 same prolific origin. In support of this he quotes 
 Theodore Roosevelt in a passage from his " Life of 
 Benton," which passage the author has since modi- 
 fied or explained, but which is reputed, according to 
 " A Pennsylvanian," to have cost him fifty thousand 
 votes out of a total Quaker population of one hun- 
 dred and twenty thousand, nearly all of whom, as a 
 matter of fact, supported the Republican electors. 
 This tribute to the extent of Quaker influence does 
 the Society of Friends too much honor, and needs to 
 be seriously examined. 
 
 William Penn was an idealist, and was far removed 
 from mercenary considerations in the founding of 
 his State. A disappointed would-be purchaser of 
 trading rights says, with surprise, " I believe truly he 
 does aim more at justice and righteousness and 
 spreading of truth than at his own particular gain." 
 He was an enthusiast for liberty, for justice, and for 
 peace, and to these causes he sacrificed a noble inher- 
 itance of money and station, and the quiet and com- 
 fort of his life. Many of his co-religionists did not at 
 first appreciate the wisdom of his generous plans. 
 To one of these who had argued for special privileges 
 for Quakers he objects, " We should look selfish and 
 do that which we have cried out upon others for, 
 namely, letting nobody touch with government but 
 those of their own way " ; and again, with a note of 
 
52 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 exultation, lie says, " I went thither to lay the foun- 
 dation of a free colony for all mankind that should 
 go thither." His " Fundamental Constitutions," 
 recently discovered in his own handwriting, the first 
 announcement of his plan of government, was liberal 
 beyond any previous publication of serious practical 
 import, and was toned down by friends to suit sup- 
 posed necessities. 
 
 It can hardly be claimed that the rank and file of 
 his followers rose to the standard of his conceptions. 
 They were mainly English yeomen, who had been for 
 years under the fire of severe persecution, and were 
 seeking peace and freedom for themselves in Penn's 
 Woods. Yet from the very nature of their religious 
 views they could not do otherwise than embrace 
 rather broad principles of liberty, fraternity and 
 equality. The divine message directly committed to 
 the custody of human agency knew no bounds of 
 wealth, learning or sex. He or she who received it 
 was set apart by no permanent canonization. There 
 was perfect equality of spiritual opportunity, and 
 perfect liberty of spiritual action. Even the smaller 
 peculiarities were testimonies to universal fellowship. 
 The tliee and the thou were applied to all, instead of 
 being addressed, as was the custom of the age, to in- 
 feriors only. The refusal to take off the hat was a 
 protest against the obsequiousness which had recently 
 been imported from the Continent. The offer to fill 
 
The Causes of Pennsylvania's Ills. 53 
 
 out the terms of imprisoninent of suffering brethren, 
 even when the prison would be the grave, was made 
 again and again in all seriousness, while the feeling 
 toward the persecutors was entirely devoid of malig- 
 nity. 
 
 This people learned well the lesson that human 
 lights were the inheritance of all men, and not of 
 those only who held " the truth." When they came 
 to America, it was not to found a little reservation, 
 built upon their own ideas of Biblical authority and 
 ecclesiastical propriety, and then to keep it sacred by 
 imprisoning and whipping and hanging dissenters. 
 They generalized from their own condition, and en- 
 acted for all the liberties they wished to enjoy them- 
 selves. The first clause of every charter of Penn — 
 including that of 1701, which lasted till the Revolu- 
 tion — ^was a full grant of freedom of worship to all 
 " who confess and acknowledge Almighty God." 
 There was, however, what then amounted to a small 
 restriction in office-holding to those who " profess to 
 believe in Jesus Christ." This restriction was in- 
 creased by legislative action to include subscription 
 to a test which barred Catholics from official life, and 
 so matters remained during provincial days. There 
 were no restrictions on worship, and a Catholic 
 church was in nearly continuous exercise of its func- 
 tions; but the government could be carried on by 
 Protestant Christians only. ISTo other founder, 
 
54 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 except Eoger Williams, grasped even approximatelj^ 
 this large truth, now so miiversally accepted. It was 
 more than toleration. Dissenting sects were more 
 than endured; they held with the dominant body, on 
 terms of equality, all civil and political rights. 
 
 This did not abolish denominational intensity. 
 Presbyterian and Quaker differed bitterly in dogma 
 and method, and their zeal against each other threw 
 thgm into opposing political parties. They were 
 keenly alive to each other's iniquities, and profoundly 
 assured of their own rectitude. Political equality did 
 not seem to breed indifference to moral obliqtdty, 
 nor was official malfeasance — any more than under 
 the exclusive hierarchy of Massachusetts — a matter 
 not to be rigorously combated. In addition to right- 
 eous government this sentiment of equality gave the 
 people a clear moral insight, which made witchcraft 
 and other crazes impossible. 
 
 The theory conquered. Rhode Island, Pennsyl- 
 vania and Maryland became the models in managing 
 religious differences. The makers of the Federal and 
 State constitutions chiseled into them imperishably 
 the doctrines of civil and religious liberty. 
 
 The other principle which the Pennsylvania set- 
 tlers had at heart — peace — ^had no such triumphant 
 career. Yet it doubtless seemed to Penn, in his 
 enthusiasm, no less important and no less likely to 
 succeed than liberty. When he said, " There may be 
 
The Causes of Pennsylvania's Ills. 55 
 
 room there, if not here, for such a Holy Experi- 
 ment," it is probable that he had most clearly in 
 mind the separation from warlike spirit and im- 
 pulses and neighbors. Justice to the Indians, though 
 right in itself, became doubly important to him in 
 maintaining pacific relations within the colony. The 
 famous treaty under the elm tree, in its descriptions 
 more artistic than historic, symbolized not only hon- 
 est dealings, but also the elimination of forts, soldiers 
 and guns from the list of colonial necessities — a con- 
 dition which continued for seventy years. 
 
 It conveys a wrong impression to call these Quak- 
 ers non-resistants and non-combatants. They did not 
 hold the views of which Tolstoi is now the most dis- 
 tinguished exponent. They believed in fairness, in 
 insistence on reason and its forcible presentation, and 
 on force up to the point where force used criminal 
 methods. During all the colonial period they con- 
 stituted the liberty party of the province, and wrung 
 from successive governors one concession after 
 another. They showed ability to resist bravely and 
 successfully whenever their rights were invaded. In 
 the struggles with the Crown and Parliament which 
 preceded the Revolution, they were united in oppo- 
 sition, and adopted heartily the measures of non- 
 importation and protest which characterized the 
 policy of John Dickinson. There are good reasons 
 for believing that during the war the sympathies of 
 
56 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 the great majority: were with the Americans, and 
 several hundred of them, though under the disappro- 
 bation of their ecclesiastical bodies, gave active aid 
 to the Kevolutionaiy cause. 
 
 The opposition was to methods, not to resistance 
 itself. They held that differences could generally be 
 settled by common sense and forbearance ; that moral 
 resistance, to its fullest extent, was better than suffer- 
 ing iniquity to prevail; and that a citizen's duty was 
 to oppose vigorously, and, if need be, suffer bravely, 
 rather than to condone wrong in others or do it him- 
 self. They had achieved a memorable triumph in 
 England the previous century, and secured, with 
 some completeness, their civil and religious rights 
 there, by methods demanding great endurance and 
 strenuous resistance to persecution, and they were 
 not convinced that the same methods would not be 
 successful in America. They stopped at war, because 
 they thought it was a crime ; that the hatred, the kill- 
 ing, the stealing, and all the immoralities which clus- 
 ter around war were wrong in themselves, and could 
 not be justified by results to be gained, or the sup- 
 posed inadequacy of right means to meet the situa- 
 tion. Such was Quaker non-resistance. That it 
 would tend to make men tolerant of evil or indiffer- 
 ent to its effect is, at the mildest, a doubtful propo- 
 sition. 
 
 It may be conceded that the province was saved 
 
The Causes of Pennsylvania's Ills. 57 
 
 from some difficulty by its Episcopalian governors. 
 The Quaker Assembly would not interfere with call- 
 ing out voluntary militia and other warlike opera- 
 tions, if they were not themselves involved, and no 
 consciences were forced. Possibly they felt like the 
 Quaker boat captain of later date, who was being 
 crowded out by more aggressive competitors at the 
 Delaware wharves, and who, in despair, called to his 
 mate, " Thee will have to come here and use some of 
 thy language." It may be a question in casuistry 
 how far a man is justified in allowing others to do 
 things innocently against which his own conscience 
 protests. There was not much of this, however, and 
 as a matter of fact they managed affairs, vrithout 
 defenses or arms or martial display, for two genera- 
 tions. 
 
 As a result, to a very large extent, of the preva- 
 lence of these ideas of liberty and peace, the Quaker 
 colony greatly prospered. " It is not to the fertility 
 of our soil," said Speaker Andrew Hamilton, a man 
 much respected and a non-Quaker, in 1739, " that we 
 ought chiefly to attribute the great progress this prov- 
 ince has made. ... It is practically and almost 
 wholly owing to the excellency of our Constitution." 
 Founded later than any of the original colonies 
 except Georgia, it grew more rapidly than any, and 
 at the Revolution was among the first three in wealth 
 and population. It was the only one whose paper 
 
58 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 currency never depreciated. It had absolute security 
 from Indian invasion and internal broils vsfhile 
 Quaker rule lasted. Its free thought created the soil 
 upon which alone science could grow. Franklin,, 
 tired of the dogmatism of Massachusetts, found a 
 congenial atmosphere in Pennsylvania. Priestley,, 
 driven from England, found sympathy and a home- 
 on the banks of the Susquehanna. Kittenhouse, 
 Bartram, Audubon, Push, Marshall and many others 
 constituted a conclave of scientists unequaled else- 
 where in America. Philadelphia was the best gov- 
 erned, most enterprising, and most important city of 
 the colonies at the beginning of the Revolution. 
 
 But Pennsylvania did not have a homogeneous 
 population of Quakers. It is doubtful if there were 
 ever more than forty thousand of them in the colony 
 at any one time, with perhaps eight thousand voters. 
 That this little group could stamp a State so as to 
 resist or greatly modify the vast development of the 
 succeeding century is in itself improbable. There 
 was the G-erman immigration, far exceeding them in 
 numbers, which gave them political allies, but which 
 brought in a different sort of people. There was the 
 Scotch-Irish immigration, also their numerical supe- 
 riors, and always restive under their control, — restive 
 to the extent of demanding with great acrimony sep- 
 arate statehood for Western Pennsylvania. In the 
 north the Connecticut settlers claimed the whole 
 
The Causes of Pennsylvania's Ills. 59 
 
 length of the State for New England, and defended 
 their claim by guns and forts, — a controversy which 
 was not settled till 1782. This heterogeneous popula- 
 tion prevented the unity of feeling and State pride 
 possible elsewhere, and may account for the fact that 
 the Voorst side of Pennsylvania is always shown to 
 the "world, — that her weaknesses and iniquities 
 are heralded in their fullness by her own sons when- 
 ever they tell against a rival party. 
 
 The determining factors of the present conditions, 
 however, have arisen since the Revolution. They 
 have overridden the influences of race and religion, 
 and have worked the same political results among the 
 militant Presbyterians of the west as among the 
 peaceful Quaker-settled counties of the southeast. 
 They are products of geography and mineralogy, and 
 would have wrought their consequences, with some 
 modifications, had the province of Pennsylvania been 
 settled by the Puritans of New England, the Cava- 
 liers of Virginia, or the Creoles of Louisiana. 
 
 The line of travel to and from the West lay across 
 the State for four hundred miles. The stream of 
 emigration, and later the retumiug stream of pro- 
 duce, when menaced by the Erie Canal, demanded 
 great concerted business organizations. The State 
 itself undertook to solve the problem, and built canals 
 and horse and " portage " railways connecting the 
 Ohio with the Delaware. The debt mounted up to 
 
60 Quakerism and Politics 
 
 forty million dollars, and the political evils were even 
 more serious. After the panic of 183 Y, when trade 
 almost ceased and the objects of State taxation be- 
 came unremunerative, the treasury staggered along 
 a little time, and then paid interest in promissory 
 notes. Sydney Smith's brilliant diatribes and Words- 
 worth's milder reproaches have advertised Pennsyl- 
 vania's disgrace to the world. But they wrote too 
 soon. Every dollar of the debt was paid, with inter- 
 est on the delayed interest. ISTot only so, bilt the de- 
 mand to sell the unprofitable and demoralizing in- 
 vestment was too strong for politicians to resist, and 
 there was a not discreditable settlement of the whole 
 matter. 
 
 But the need for the line still remained. There 
 was only a transference from management by the 
 State itself to management by companies deriving 
 their powers from the State. The legislature was 
 still the source of wealth and power. 
 
 At the same time came the development of the un- 
 rivaled mineral resources of the State. Canals, and 
 afterward railways, were run in every direction. 
 Individual fortunes were unable to open and work 
 the mines of coal and iron, and to develop the raw 
 material into an available shape for practical use. A 
 State of farmers, or of small textile manufacturers, 
 or of diversified industries, would have no temptation 
 to connect politics and business; a State with the 
 
The Causes of Pennsylvania's Ills. 61 
 
 wealth of the world within its reach, but dependent 
 on legislative favor, was drawn by irresistible allure- 
 ments to give a mercenary tone to its public life, and 
 lose sight of high ideals in an intoxicating commercial 
 prosperity. 
 
 Prior to the Civil War the tariff question did not 
 affect politics. Pennsylvania, normally Democratic, 
 wanted a tariff, and both parties were willing to grant 
 it. But when the cause became identified with the 
 fortunes of the Republican party, majorities of two 
 or three hundred thousand were easy. Workmen 
 had noticed that low rates were coincident with low 
 wages, scanty work, and suffering. Whether right 
 or not, they concluded that coincidence meant con- 
 sequence, and went bodily into the Republican 
 ranks. There has been no steady, healthy opposition 
 in Pennsylvania or Philadelphia since the war. 
 So it has come to pass that the wealth of 
 natural resources, the coal and iron of the 
 hills, and their inevitable connection with legis- 
 lation, have been the undoing of political morality. 
 They have made Pennsylvania rich beyond the 
 dreams of our grandfathers, and have brought a re- 
 liable and abidiag commercial prosperity. Men with 
 vast interests confided to their care, to be worked for 
 their own and their clients' benefit, and with golden 
 prospects before them, have adjudged their duty to 
 these interests to be superior to their duty to the 
 
62 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 State and to morality, or they have argued that at- 
 tention to business prosperity was their duty to the 
 State and to morality. 
 
 These facts are explanations, not excuses. The 
 vast natural wealth of the State has often been a 
 stronger force than the virtue of its people, but in 
 many issues of the past that virtue has triumphed. It 
 did when the people sold the lines of transportation, 
 when they stopped all special legislation, when they 
 made offices elective by themselves instead of by the 
 legislature, and in hundreds of minor matters. The 
 great State evil of the present, appropriations to 
 charities and schools, in which money is squandered 
 and favor and silence purchased, is raising against 
 itself a sentiment which will ultimately prevail. 
 They who write the permanent disgrace of Pennsyl- 
 vania are premature. 
 
 Whether it is a sinner more than any other State 
 may not be known, but the world knows the worst. 
 The bitterness of faction in each of the parties has 
 told every discreditable thing that is true, and much 
 that is not true. The truth is dark enough. At each 
 end of the State is a large city, and in each politics 
 has often been a question of contracts. The pre- 
 vailing management in one allies itself with 
 the Quay faction of the Republican party; in 
 the other against it. One of them, and prob- 
 ably both, has carefully studied its lessons in 
 
The Causes of Pennsylvania's Ills. 63 
 
 the Tammany laboratory. They have under- 
 taken to buy some of the voters, to deceive others, 
 and to keep others asleep. Vast sums of money have 
 been spent in securing nominations and elections of 
 members of the legislature, with reference to the sena- 
 torial choice, the most of it corruptly. Corporations 
 with tremendous financial concerns at stake have 
 swelled the funds. A gentleman who knows the con- 
 ditions as well as any one in the State estimates the 
 purchasable material in one legislature of two hun- 
 dred and fifty-three members to be about fifty. Men 
 of wealth and education, the natural leaders of reform 
 movements, are directors of hospitals and asylums 
 and schools of various grades, and do not take their 
 right places in politics lest they should imperil their 
 worthy institutions. But there are those who believe 
 that it would be better for the State if every one of 
 these charities and schools, with all its inmates, was 
 sunk in the sea, rather than that moral considerations 
 should be made subordinate to mercenary. Again, 
 Pennsylvania is a State of corporations. The highest 
 business talent is involved in their management. 
 Many of them have secured all they need from the 
 State, but they must preserve, they argue, the in- 
 terests of their stockholders, which are at the mercy 
 of adverse legislative or councilmanic action. A 
 threat of blackmail makes them the silent witnesses, 
 if not the active participants, of the triumph of 
 
64 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 iniquity, and deprives good government of their 
 potent leadership. But there are those who would 
 not accept a directorship or hold stock in companiea 
 which thrive on the profits of evil doing. This may 
 truly be said: That the Commonwealth has a tough 
 fight on its hands against the natural consequences of 
 its own riches, and that, when virtue and honor pre- 
 vail, as they will in the future, and as they have re- 
 peatedly in the past, it will be in the face of a 
 stronger opposition than confronts the party of right- 
 eousness in almost any other State. Meantime, th& 
 few Quakers left in Pennsylvania are working, almost 
 to a man, for clean politics, and are profoundly skepti- 
 cal when they are told that the devotion of their an- 
 cestors to high ideals of peace and moral purity is 
 responsible for present corruption and selfishness. 
 
THE IMPROVEMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA 
 POLITICS* 
 
 The request conveyed to me was that I should 
 read to you a paper on the " Influence of Eriends as 
 a Eeligious Body upon the Government of Penn- 
 sylvania." I asked to be excused from this service, 
 partly because it has been many a time treated, and 
 partly because the influences have become so mixed 
 that it is difiicult for me to trace them. Very few 
 people now in Pennsylvania can say that their ruliag 
 inheritance has come from one section or the other 
 of the country. My own ancestry includes several 
 families of English Quakers who came in with Wil- 
 liam Penn; a Erench Huguenot, who founded Stras- 
 burg, Lancaster County; a Scotch-Irishman, and a 
 "Welsh settler of Haverford. From which of these 
 sources I have inherited special characteristics I do 
 not know, and what is true of me is true of the great 
 majority of the citizens of Pennsylvania. The confu- 
 sion is made still greater by the influence of one sec- 
 tion upon another. Unquestionably in early times 
 the English Quaker and the Scotch-Irish Presbyte- 
 rian were antipodes in political ideas, in theology and 
 in social questions. One settled the east and the 
 
 *Aii address delivered before the Cliosophic Society of Lan- 
 caster, Pa., 1904. 
 
66 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 other the west of the State, and if bad government 
 is to be the test of racial or denominational influence, 
 it is pretty hard to decide whether Philadelphia or 
 Pittsburg is the worst. The modifying factors work- 
 ing through these two hundred and twenty years have 
 brought us all into the list of Pennsylvanians, and 
 these modifying factors have been geological and 
 geographical rather than racial. 
 
 But if I do not speak on the subject assigned, it will 
 form an excellent preface to that which I wish to 
 make the subject of this paper, " The Moral Develop- 
 ment of Pennsylvania Politics in the Last One Hun- 
 dred Years." The leaders of political life in Penn- 
 sylvania prior to the Revolution made it the best gov- 
 erned colony in the whole line of those which 
 stretched along the Atlantic coast. The ideas for 
 which it stood were the ideas which have been incor- 
 porated into our national government. It is not the . 
 dogmatism of New England or the aristocracy of 
 Virginia which we now consider as distinctively 
 American; it is the civil and religious liberty of 
 Pennsylvania. So much is this a part of our politi- 
 cal thinking that we are apt to forget how exclusively 
 Pennsylvania stood for these ideas in other times and 
 how she prospered as a result of them. Other princi- 
 ples, the doctrine of peace and arbitration as opposed 
 to warlike settlement of international disputes, the 
 principle of absolute justice and fairness in dealing 
 
TJie Improvement of Pennsylvania Politics. 67 
 
 with inferior, races, we do homage to in stating that 
 they belong to the purer and higher life of the 
 future. Very few will be found to dispute their theo- 
 retical correctness, and if peace is not as much a part 
 of our national progress as liberty, there is nothing 
 in our history to indicate that we are not moving 
 towards it. The settlers of Pennsylvania were a hun- 
 dred years ahead of their time in matters of liberty, 
 and perhaps three hundred in other peculiar founda- 
 tion ideas. 
 
 When Pennsylvania approached the Revolution it 
 was the keystone of the situation. It had grown 
 more rapidly in wealth and material advantages than 
 any other colony, though it was almost the latest set- 
 tled. Its internal affairs had been managed with 
 greatest vsdsdom. Its taxes were the lightest; its 
 main city was the largest, the best lighted, best 
 paved and best policed; its hospitals and char- 
 itable and penal institutions were the most en- 
 lightened and effective. Its free constitution had 
 brought thither the leading thinkers of the time, 
 especially in the realm of science. The best state- 
 ment from the constitutional point of view of the 
 position of the country was made by John Dickinson; 
 and the selection of the city as the headquarters of 
 the Continental Congress, and afterwards the capital 
 of the United States up to 1800, was not merely a 
 question of geography, but of general fitness. 
 
68 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 The controlling influences in Pennsylvania prior to 
 the Revolution were not merely moral men, but they 
 were also progressive men. They understood the 
 conditions of growth, they prepared wisely for the 
 future, and if it is true that Philadelphia is now slow, 
 if she is, as a magazine writer has called her, " cor- 
 rupt and contented," it is due to influences which 
 have had their origin and development since the 
 Revolution. 
 
 But my point to-night is tO' take up the conditions 
 of the State at this date and to show that there has 
 been no serious deterioration in the years which sep- 
 arate us from the Revolution. The war itself, as 
 wars usually do when they are close at home, did re- 
 sult in loose government. The very preparation and 
 rumor of war began it. In a private letter, written 
 by James Pemberton in 1763, contrasting things with 
 the quiet regime of a dozen years before, he says: 
 
 " Vice of all kinds prevails in a lamentable degree; 
 murder, highway robberies, and house-breaking are 
 committed, and the perpetrators have passed undis- 
 covered; the minds of the people are agitated by a 
 great ferment; and the rulers of the people cause 
 them to err; the few in public station who have 
 virtue enough to put the laws in execution have their 
 hands weakened by a mean and mercenary opposition, 
 so that desolation appears almost inevitable." 
 
The Improvement of Pennsylvania Politics. 69 
 
 It is not wise to belittle our present political ills. 
 Pennsylvania has many of them which wise men will 
 not close their eyes to. There may be an immoral 
 autocracy of leadership, though leadership, and fre- 
 quently autocratic leadership, is essential in any well 
 organized and successful movement, whether politi- 
 cal, commercial or moral. 
 
 There may be mercenary officials who, in some 
 eases sporadically, in others systematically, are steal- 
 ing from the public treasuries. The temptations are 
 of such a character, and the opportunities are so great 
 and so veiled, that it would be a matter of wonder if 
 it were not so. There may be a low standard of 
 official conduct which is not essentially mercenary, as 
 when a kindly man votes for an improper incumbent, 
 on the plea that himself or family needs the aid the 
 salary will give. 
 
 But the whole tone of public thought will have to 
 be raised many degrees before a community, with uni- 
 versal suffrage in its grasp, will look on public service 
 purely from the point of view of public good. Unsel- 
 fishness in politics will come when men's hearts are 
 attuned to a purer morality than now exists in the 
 masses anywhere. Love of fame, of power, of distinc- 
 tion, may be one grade higher in the moral scale than 
 love of money, but they are equally selfish as motives 
 for public action. 
 
 It is not my purpose to apologize for or to 
 
70 Quaherism and Politics. 
 
 condemn critically existing political conditions, but 
 very briefly to show that there has been a marked im- 
 provement in these conditions through the years 
 which separate us from the Revolutionary War and 
 the times of George Washington. 
 
 I believe the contrary opinion is generally enter- 
 tained. The purity of the Washingtonian age seems 
 to be a maxim taught to children in school, and toward 
 which we sometimes look with sadness when we 
 compare it with our own. The line of Presidents 
 from Washington to the second Adams is apparently 
 to the ordinary American a line of intellectual and 
 moral giants. Jackson, to a certain extent, inaugu- 
 rated the era of lower grade statesmen since his day, 
 and shared their frailties. 
 
 It is not difficult to explain this partial deification 
 of the founders of the Eepublic. Individually, many 
 of them deserve it. JSTotliing has come to light to 
 lessen the respect that we should feel for the supreme 
 public services and exalted standards of our first 
 President, and history has so emphasized this fact 
 that his virtues are reflected from the other public 
 characters of his day, and they are credited with 
 something of the same distinguished patriotism. 
 When the idea thus gained from history and biog- 
 raphy is compared with the newspaper idea of present 
 politics we note the vast degeneracy. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the historians have hardly 
 
The Improvement of Pennsylvania Politics. 71 
 
 dealt fairly by us. In their researches among con- 
 temporary letters and papers they have been sadly 
 conscious of deficiencies which they have not deemed 
 it advisable to report. They have seen the same sel- 
 fishness, the same unfair virulence of partisan spirit, 
 the same willingness to cast their votes for personal 
 reasons of a mercenary sort, which good men so de- 
 plore to-day. The honest and fair-minded historian, 
 whatever impression his writings make on his readers, 
 must be an optimist. He must know the evils out of 
 which the State has evolved, and with this knowledge 
 he must have hopes that present ills, however serious, 
 must somehow, some day, be rectified. 
 
 The mob government which followed the depar- 
 ture of the British in 1781 is a matter of history. 
 Unquestioned Revolutionary patriots, like Wilson and 
 Mifflin, were besieged in their houses by the wild, 
 riotous people demanding vengeance even of the con- 
 servatives. There was not enough of the sort of pop- 
 ulation which produced the French Revolution, but 
 in a feeble way the Philadelphia Revolution went 
 through the same stages. The voluntary exile of 
 many British sympathizers, who had been the men of 
 property and standing in the country, and the general 
 depreciation of currency and property, had left the 
 balance of power in the hands of an excited populace. 
 These, for a time, overawed the authorities, sending 
 two comparatively innocent men to the gallows, and 
 
72 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 made demands for reeklesss legislation which were al- 
 most impossible to resist. In the midst of this excite- 
 ment, Joseph Eeed was made President of the 
 Supreme Executive Council, the Governor of the 
 State. The legislature thought it necessary to cele- 
 brate the event in a banquet, and unfortunately for 
 the credit of our country, the caterer's bill is still in 
 existence, having recently been unearthed by Dr. 
 Bolles, a colleague of mine at Haverford, as follows: 
 
 The General Assembly of the State of Peim sylvania 
 1st Dec. 1778 To Giflford Dolly, Dr. 
 
 £. 
 To provide for dinner for 270 gents, 500 
 
 522 Bottles of Madeira Wine, 1229 
 
 116 Large Bowls of punch 348 
 
 9 Large Bowls of toddy, 13 
 
 6 Large Bowls of sangaree, 18 
 
 24 Bottles of port wine, 36 
 
 2 Tubs of grog, 36 
 
 1 Gallon spirits, 6 
 96 Wine glasses, (broke) 36 
 29 Jelly glasses, (broke) 10 
 9 Desert plates, (broke) 6 
 11 China plates (broke) 11 
 
 2 China dishes, (broke) 10 
 5 Decanters, (broke) 7 
 1 Large inkstand, (broke) 6 
 14 candles, 21 
 
 2295 
 Our Revolutionary Fathers evidently had a con- 
 vivial time, and the broken ware was a testimony to 
 inebriety then as now. We have our own junketings 
 at public expense, but we must recall that this was in 
 the darkest days of the war, when the soldiers were 
 
The Improvement of Pennsylvania Politics. 73 
 
 starving and freezing, when the finances were utterly 
 disorganized, and when it looked as if the whole cause 
 would be lost for lack of money. One can not but 
 question the seK-denying patriotism, or else the seK- 
 restraint, of men who would permit such a bill, 
 inflated by the depreciated currency though it was, 
 at public cost. 
 
 When the Federal Constitutional Convention had 
 done its work in Philadelphia it was of vast import- 
 ance that Pennsylvania should ratify it. She was a 
 central and important State, and negative action 
 would probably produce a rejection of the whole in- 
 strument, and plunge the country into anarchy. Her 
 legislature was then in session, but just about to 
 adjourn, and it was concluded, as the majority was 
 favorable, to force through a series of resolutions 
 calling a convention before the opposition, which was 
 very strong in the western part of the State, had 
 time to organize. The only way the minority had to 
 defeat this hasty legislation was by absenting itself 
 and breaking the quorum. 
 
 The Constitutionalists were equal to the emer- 
 gency, and a mob of men visited the boarding houses 
 of two of the demurring legislators in Philadelphia, 
 and forced them, in rude garb and protesting in no 
 mild language, into the State House on Chestnut 
 street, where the clerk called their names and estab- 
 lished a quorum. The resolutions were carried, and 
 
74 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 Pennsylvania was the first State, except Delaware, to 
 adopt the Constitution which made us a nation. The 
 others followed, and the beneficial result was 
 reached, but by a stretch of unfairness and illegality 
 which can only be justified as a revolutionary act. 
 
 The administration of Washington followed. The 
 play of partisan and personal forces began. A paper 
 of the times declares that " if ever a nation was de- 
 ceived by a man the American nation was deceived 
 by Washington; if ever a nation was debased by a 
 man the American nation was debased by Washing- 
 ton." 
 
 There were press muzzlers in those days, but the 
 editors gloried in libel suits. 
 
 The important acts were the adoption of the state 
 debts by the Federal Government and the choice of a 
 location for the capital city. As is well known, the 
 two measures were so associated that by a trade Jef- 
 ferson threw a few votes for Hamilton's favorite 
 funding measure, and in return the New York states- 
 man found as many northern votes for the Potomac 
 site; and so the southern river, instead of the Dela- 
 ware, became the site of the District of Columbia. 
 
 Both of these bills gave excellent opportunities for 
 making money out of legislation. Had the two sen- 
 ators from Peimsylvania united for the development 
 of the State on the same location, there is good rea- 
 son to believe that a majority of the congress would 
 
The Improvement of Pennsylvania Politics. 75 
 
 have passed it; but one owned land on the Delaware 
 and the other on the Susquehanna, and the chance 
 slipped by. 
 
 The ups and downs of Hamilton's biU were 
 reflected in the prices of state bonds, and legislators 
 did not scruple to use their private knowledge to ad- 
 vance their private fortunes. William Findley was 
 a Eepresentative from Pennsylvania at the time, and 
 he tells of a league of congressmen who had agreed 
 to claim $500,000 more than Pennsylvania's actual 
 debt, and then destroy all evidences of the transac- 
 tion, so that the fraud should never be disclosed. His 
 honest protest alone, he says, prevented the consum- 
 mation of the scheme. 
 
 Senator Maclay's Journal gives us many insights 
 into the political condition of the times. He says that 
 Kepresentative Fitzsimmons held back the Tariff Bill 
 till his own ships were in ; that Senator Bingham took 
 $36,000 in counterfeit notes to the United States 
 Treasury and received good money for them, and that 
 a dinner would bring ten votes where public service 
 would bring one, and many other despondent state- 
 ments. 
 
 " Jay," said Gouverneur Morris, at a later date, 
 knocking the ashes out of his pipe, " what a set of 
 scoundrels we had in the Second Congress ! " 
 
 It is never pleasant to record evil deeds, whether 
 our own or our ancestors. Their patriotic virtue car- 
 
76 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 ried them safely over the tendencies which cropped 
 out in such instances as the above. Because these 
 crimes Avere conceived and perpetrated, and the par- 
 ticipants escaped public penalties, the young nation 
 was not submerged in guilt and infamy. 
 
 The purpose of mentioning them here is to show 
 the outgrowth of weakness and wickedness in these 
 ancient times, to indicate that the public men of one 
 hundred years ago were of the same stuff as our own. 
 Indeed, the conclusion seems inevitable that had they 
 been confronted Avith the same iierce temptations 
 which exist to-day, a balance in favor of present 
 virtue would be found. The days of corporations and 
 contractors, seeking vast financial favors of legisla- 
 tive and executive bodies, had not yet arrived. The 
 bribes to which they succumbed were paltry affairs, 
 measured by our standards. With this difference 
 staring us in the face, we cannot see how the days of 
 Washington and Jefferson can show any advantage 
 over the days of Cleveland and Roosevelt. 
 
 And yet the nation survived and prospered. She 
 got out of her difficulties with considerable credit. 
 She kept up her standards. She stood for liberty, 
 equality and honesty. She developed new men to 
 meet every new emergency, and placed her corrupt, 
 her incompetent and her selfish politicians, after they 
 had run their little debasing career, in the back- 
 ground of oblivion. 
 
The Improvement of Pennsylvania Politics. 77 
 
 Whether as regards the nation or the State, she did 
 this by a continual fight against evil tendencies, by 
 preaching in church and school the nobility of self- 
 effacing public service, and continually aiding' the re- 
 formatory forces which seem to exist in human 
 society. When good men do their duty the whole of 
 history shows that there is a trend toward goodness 
 and power in the affairs of men. As our ancestors 
 have triumphed over the serious obliquities of their 
 times, and bequeathed to us a nation and a State 
 where the forces of righteousness are stronger than iu 
 their day, so will we do the same. We may not shut 
 our eyes to present evils, but we may combat them 
 with the assurance that we are on the winning side, 
 and, although in human affairs evil-doers do not seem 
 always to reap their just rewards, yet as a net result 
 we are carryrag forward the cause of political reform 
 with each decade to a better standard of righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 The improvement has not been uniform. Great 
 evils would entrench themselves in pubHc places, and 
 for a time would be invulnerable. Men would grow 
 discouraged as they would concentrate their attention 
 on these back eddies, and would talk pessimistically 
 about the good old times forever gone. But the 
 forces of good would be gathering, and men's con- 
 sciences would be rectifying themselves, and the quiet 
 forces underneath would be doing their work; and 
 
78 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 finally, in one great cataclysm, the evil would topple 
 over and the stream of progress move triumphantly 
 along. Nothing can check permanently the healthy 
 growth- of an educated and Hberty-loving democracy. 
 The natural laws of development, the spirit that has 
 dictated upward progress through the Christian cen- 
 turies, must, overlooking the backward tendencies 
 which are either temporary or local, still continue to 
 place politics on an ever-rising plane of morals. 
 
THE FEIEND IN POLITICS * 
 
 " Meddle not "with government; never speak of it; 
 let others say or do as they please. . . . For it is a 
 charge I leave with you and yours, meddle not with 
 the puhlic, neither business nor money, but under- 
 stand how to avoid it and defend yourselves upon 
 occasion against it. For much knowledge brings sor- 
 row, and much doing, more. Therefore know God, 
 know yourselves; love home, know your own business 
 and mind it, and you have more time and peace than 
 your neighbors. ... I have said little to you of dis- 
 tributing justice, or being just in power or govern- 
 ment, for I should desire you may never be con- 
 cerned therein, unless it were on your own principles, 
 and then the less the better, unless God requires it of 
 you." 
 
 These are extracts from William Penn's advice to 
 his children, written on the occasion of his leaving 
 England in 1699, on his second visit to America. 
 One cannot help wondering why he wrote advice 
 which he consistently disobeyed, during his whole 
 life, and on which disobedience rested his most promi- 
 nent claims to fame and usefulness. We might, per- 
 haps, assume that he foresaw the failures of his sons 
 
 *An address given before the Haverford Summer School of 
 Religious History, 1904. 
 
80 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 in this direction, and that they -would exchange his 
 philanthropic aims for mercenary ones, but this sup- 
 position is negatived when we remember that he made 
 them his heirs, not only to the proprietorship of his 
 great estate in Pennsylvania, but also to the governor- 
 ship as well. 
 
 To understand the reasons for this advice, we may, 
 perhaps, have some clue when we remember that at 
 this time he was deeply involved in debt, having 
 actually mortgaged his Pennsylvania property to his 
 defrauding steward, Peter Pord, and was endeavoring 
 to cover up the transaction till a better time should 
 come; that he had also, for about a decade, been a 
 suspect during the reign of "William III., on account 
 of his friendliness to the exiled Stuart king; that he 
 had been in prison, not only for the cause of truth, 
 but also as a debtor and as a politician, and that these 
 imprisonments had distinctly been the result of his 
 meddling with the government. He evidently felt 
 that his own peace of mind would have been greatly 
 enhanced if he had left these perplexing political 
 questions alone. The advice looks a little like a tem- 
 porary discouragement of a strong and conscientious 
 man, the glow of whose youthful enthusiasm had 
 worn away, and the evident fruits of whose enlight- 
 ened experiment in government had not been con- 
 spicuous. It was a time of temporary depression, 
 when he was in the thick of the storm, receiving all 
 
The Friend in Politics. 81 
 
 its buffetings, and not yet beginning to recognize its 
 beneficent fruits. His splendid patrimony was all but 
 gone; his colonists, many of whom he had rescued 
 from English jails, seemed to be ungrateful; his far- 
 seeing ideas about government were not being ac- 
 cepted, but instead there was haggling over little privi- 
 leges which he deemed unworthy of their serious con- 
 sideration; and, on the other side, there was the nag- 
 ging of the British court, which used the Quaker 
 objections to war and oaths as a means for insuring 
 the failure of the exalted attempt. Perhaps it was 
 some such considerations as these which induced Penn 
 to give this advice, so contrary to his general train of 
 thought and expression, and absolutely opposed to his 
 life-long example. 
 
 Friends had not shown any dislike or inaptitude 
 for government. Wherever their numbers were con- 
 siderable, and the laws gave them any opportunity, 
 they had taken their full share of the work. In 
 Ehode Island, in 1672, and adjoining years, the gov- 
 ernor, deputy-governor and the magistrates were all 
 chosen from among them, and the whole management 
 of the colony was in their hands, and William God- 
 dington was an influential man for a long time. In 
 North Carolina, about 1686, John Archdale was the 
 governor, and the Quakers were the prominent ele- 
 ment of its politics. As Bancroft says: " It was set- 
 tled by the freest of the free, by men to whom the 
 
82 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 restrictions of other colonies were too severe, and the 
 settlers were genial in their tempers, of serene mind, 
 enemies to violence and bloodshed, and the spirit of 
 humanity retained its influence in the paradise of 
 Quakers." JSTew Jersey, too, was a Quaker common- 
 wealth, and when an effort was made to secure admin- 
 istration of justice by means of oaths, so universal was 
 Quaker sentiment that the courts were practically 
 closed. All the men capable of administering the 
 affairs positively refused to take any part, and this 
 condition lasted for years. 
 
 But it was, of course, in Pennsylvania that the 
 Quakers had their full swing in politics. They evi- 
 dently meant to take it. It was just as serious a mat- 
 ter as their religion or their business. During early 
 years, nearly all the men prominent in state affairs 
 were ministers of the gospel, and they divided daily 
 their state and church work so that they would not 
 conflict with each other. Here is a minute of 1685, 
 of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting: "John Eckley and 
 James Claypoole are appointed by this Meeting to 
 request the magistrates of the county that they will 
 please to keep their court on the first 5th day of 
 every month, which, if they please to grant, then the 
 weekly meeting, which hath hitherto been on the 
 5th day, shall be on the 4th day, that so the court 
 and the meeting may not be on the same day." 
 
The Friend in Politics. 83 
 
 The same men were magistrates and ministers, and 
 they had to arrange a program which would permit 
 both forms of activity to be carried on. And so these 
 " Friends of God," as they called themselves, became 
 expert politicians, and, like politicians, when they ran 
 out of questions of importance, stirred up their minds 
 on the subject of imaginary wrongs, and raised a tem- 
 pest over little trifles. For thirty years after the set- 
 tlement Pennsylvania politics cannot be considered 
 essentially peaceful, and were not what one would 
 expect of a Quaker attempt in government. There 
 was not overmuch opposition to their control (except 
 temporarily when adverse deputy governors happened 
 to be on hand), and so they took the occasion to form 
 political parties among themselves and to attack each 
 other with quite as much vigor as we see in present 
 days. They had never had any chance to meddle 
 with government in England, and they were veritable 
 tyros in the art. But out of their little differences 
 grew up the best governed and the most peaceful and 
 contented commonwealth in the n^w country. 
 
 They could be suiEciently vigorous when the occa- 
 sion demanded. Thomas Lloyd, Oxford scholar and 
 Quaker minister though he was, could be a most stren- 
 uous partisan. When Governor Blackwell, who was 
 an honest but tactless man, and who got on the wrong 
 side of the Quaker politicians of the day, tried to force 
 
84 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 his measures, lie met ■with a resistance which finally 
 drove him from his position, and it was not always a 
 quiet or a passive one. 
 
 Thomas Lloyd died at an early age, worn out with 
 the responsibility and turmoil of managing State and 
 Church in the Quaker colony, and one eifect of his 
 death was to bring into prominence his namesake, but 
 not relative, that first Pennsylvania " boss," David 
 Lloyd. David marshaled the Quaker host against 
 Penn and Logan and their supposed aristocratic ten- 
 dencies. They made mistakes, of which he was quick 
 to take advantage. He was shrewd and resourceful, 
 working on the prejudices and convictions of the 
 Priends, and building up the party, which by fair 
 means, and sometimes by foul, made infinite trouble 
 in the little community. He absolutely controlled the 
 legislature. Ultimately they threw him overboard 
 and returned to their allegiance, and, after he had 
 sulked a half a dozen years in the country, made him 
 Chief Justice, a position where his great abilities 
 could exhibit themselves, and where his offensive par- 
 tisanship had no room for exercise. It is no wonder 
 that Penn urged them in a word of his own coiuage: 
 " Be not so governmentish." 
 
 jSTow the rest of the acts of these early Quaker poli- 
 ticians and their quarrels, are they not written in the 
 colonial records of the Province of Pennsylvania, by 
 
The Friend in Politics. 85 
 
 the pen of that veracious old chronicler, William 
 Markham? 
 
 About 1710 they got together. Other people were 
 coming in, and they could not well afford to differ 
 among themselves. David Lloyd was deposed from 
 the leadership. Logan became the chief man of the 
 Province, and, as the agent of the Penn family, he 
 ruled it wisely and well for forty years. During this 
 time a great Quaker political machine was built up. 
 It was probably scrupulously honest, but wonderfully 
 effective. The Penn family in England had left the 
 Friendly fold, and appointed governors who fre- 
 quently sided with the non-Quaker partisans, but the 
 Priends kept their hold on the provincial legislature. 
 Sometimes it was unanimously Priendly, and at no 
 time was there more than a small minority of oppo- 
 nents, and yet the Priends were now in a minority of 
 the total population. Some of their acts verged on 
 the methods of the sharp politician. Por instance, 
 they allowed the Quaker counties more than their 
 share of representatives, not by direct edict, but by 
 declining to admit a proportionate share from the new 
 counties as they developed. But, on the whole, their 
 politics will bear inspection. They held the German 
 vote, which enabled them to triumph. They stood 
 fast for personal liberty and opposition to proprietary 
 pretensions, which gave them the support of the lib- 
 
86 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 erty-loving people of the colony. They picked their 
 ablest men to represent them in the Assembly, and 
 kept them there year after year. 
 
 One of their leaders was John Kinsey, who, during 
 the later years of his life, held at the same time the 
 position of Speaker of the Assembly, Chief Justice of 
 the Colony, and Clerk of the Yearly Meeting. An- 
 other was his successor as Speaker, Isaac JSTorris the 
 second, the son of the prominent minister and saga- 
 cious advisor of Penn of the same name, who led the 
 majority in the Assembly for nearly thirty years. He 
 is the man to whom the inscription on the Liberty 
 Bell is due, " Proclaim liberty throughout the land, 
 unto all the inhabitants thereof." It was he who 
 became famous for his indignant refusal to accept a 
 seductive proposition of the governor. " No man 
 shall ever stand on my grave and say, ' Curse him, 
 here lies he who betrayed the liberty of his country.' " 
 
 The country Friends marshaled themselves under 
 George Ashbridge, whose shed, which he had con- 
 structed for his horse and carriage at the old Goshen 
 Meeting House, was, until recently, still standing, 
 with doors both front and back, so that he could drive 
 through, for, he said, he " never liked to back out of 
 anything." When, after he had been some dozen 
 years in the position, there came the time when the 
 demands of the Indian war induced the resignation 
 of the Quaker members, he applied his principle of 
 
The Friend in Politics. 87 
 
 not backing out to a practical purpose, when he re- 
 fused to accede to the wishes of his ecclesiastical supe- 
 riors to withdraw and apologize, and they reported 
 sadly to the Monthly Meeting: " He do not feel him- 
 self culpable." So he remained both in the Assem- 
 bly and in the meeting for thirty years, till his death, 
 just on the eve of the Revolutionary War. 
 
 Such were the leaders the Quaker machine had. 
 They were continually meddling with politics, and 
 their people loved to have it so. They revered 
 the memory of William Penn, and preferred the 
 example of his whole life to the advice given in a tem- 
 porary condition of pessimism. The Indian wars of 
 1756 shook their hold on power by their own renun- 
 ciation of position. Had they been mere politicians, 
 they would have trimmed before the storm. Had 
 they been rather stronger Quakers, they might have 
 held on to power, without any trimming, a while 
 longer. About this time began to grow up in the 
 Quaker mind the mystical development which had 
 never been far below the surface. Exhortations 
 began to be heard to eschew worldly activity and de- 
 velop the sanctified spirit which throve in the silence 
 of the ilesh. The Revolutionary war put the climax 
 on this teaching. In the first place, the active public 
 spirited men of the Society took strenuous part on the 
 American side and were disowned. The general feel- 
 ing that the Quakers were British sympathizers and 
 
88 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 had opposed the Eevolution, lost them any opportun- 
 ity to recover the political hold which they had held 
 prior to 1756. And so the mystic triumphed, and 
 with individual exceptions, more numerous a hundred 
 years ago than now, the Quaker withdrew from poli- 
 tics. He filled up his share of public activities in 
 developing prisons and hospitals and in doing works 
 of charity, in fighting slavery and drunkenness and 
 oaths and war, within and without his own ranks, and 
 in having a general oversight from a separate height 
 of observation, over the rights and wrongs of the na- 
 tion. But the Quaker vote became a negligible quan- 
 tity, and no public man received it because he hap- 
 pened to be a member of their body. I have heard it 
 said, though I have not seen it, that there was a query 
 in New York Yearly Meeting: " Are Friends clear of 
 holding positions of profit and honor under the gov- 
 ernment ? " So the revolution from the days of 
 Thomas and David Lloyd, James Logan, Isaac JSTor- 
 ris, John Kinsey and George Ashbridge has been 
 brought about. 
 
 But taking facts as they are, what is our duty now? 
 We cannot simply resolve to retake the mantle which 
 our fathers have cast do^vn. We cannot say among 
 ourselves, " Go to ! I will be Speaker of the Assem- 
 bly, or Chief Justice of the State, or Senator of the 
 United States, or President." Something more than 
 our consent to hold office is evidently needed. Poli- 
 
The Friend in Politics. 89 
 
 tical conditions have absolutely changed in the last 
 century, and, if we are to have anything like the legiti- 
 mate influence which it is not only our privilege, but 
 our duty, to exert, it is necessary to adapt ourselves 
 to the new conditions with a full comprehension of 
 their meaning and methods. It is idle to declaim 
 against machines in polities. They have got there, as 
 they have got into industry, business, philanthropy 
 and church work, in response to the undeniable de- 
 mand of the age for efficiency. Our Quaker ancestors 
 of pre-Eevolutionary days did not work without co- 
 operation, and the political parties of the present time 
 have simply improved and developed that co-opera- 
 tion into a successful organization. A man may glory 
 in being an " Independent," outside of all machines, 
 but his efforts under such circumstances will be com- 
 paratively futile. He must take his place with his fel- 
 low believers, and do the work to which he is assigned 
 as thoroughly and obediently as if he were employed 
 in a factory or bank, iloreover, he must, as in these 
 cases, begin at the bottom, and prove his utility as he 
 goes along, receiving promotion as he deserves it. 
 This does not mean that he must sacrifice his convic- 
 tions or violate his conscience. Here, of course, there 
 comes an end to obedience and subordination, and it is 
 doubtless true that a man with a conscience will, 
 under certain conditions, be less valuable to the 
 organization, and have fewer chances for personal pro- 
 
90 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 motion, than the man without it. On the other hand, 
 under other conditions, conscience becomes a valuable 
 asset. 
 
 If you ask the practical significance of all this, come 
 with me to the EepubKcan Primary Convention, 
 which nominates the officials of a nearby township. 
 You will find, crowded in a little room, dense with 
 smoke of mixed grades of tobacco, some two hundred 
 voters, of all colors and ranks in life and variations of 
 purpose and motive. The active ofiice seeker is 
 bustling around among them, shaking hands cordially 
 with his neighbors, whom he may have discarded 
 many times before, promoting sociability and donat- 
 ing cigars. A man, with just enough liquor aboard 
 to be funny, is the center of an admiring group of 
 young fellows, who laugh loudly at his jokes of 
 greater or less vulgarity. The wealthy merchant 
 whose residence is in this suburb jostles against his 
 coachman or gardener, and the college professor occu- 
 pies a seat in close proximity to the recent importation 
 from Virginia or Italy. Is this any place for a minis- 
 ter of the Society of Friends? The meeting is called 
 to order, and immediately the better and more unsel- 
 fish part of the community asserts itself. ISTomina- 
 tions are made of men who will fill more or less 
 worthily the positions of School Director, Road Su- 
 pervisor, Township Auditor or Tax Collector. It is 
 remembered that another convention is being held by 
 
The Friend in Politics. 91 
 
 the opposing party, that another set of candidates will 
 go before the public, and that in local matters of this 
 sort very little attention is paid to party lines. So a 
 man of doubtful antecedents or of objectionable 
 policy is generally excluded, and when the complete 
 ticket is read out, as the result of a primitive form of 
 voting, in which the hat takes the place of the ballot 
 box, a reputable list of candidates has usually been 
 worked out by the machinery of the meeting. 
 
 During the operations, various questions may arise. 
 " Shall the Convention be held next year in the saloon 
 or in the school house ? " " Is a certain policy of road- 
 building better than another?" "Is it wise to in- 
 crease the school accommodations, in view of the 
 financial condition of the township? " and plenty 
 more, which are argued then and there by a process 
 which accomplishes the result, if not always strictly 
 parliamentary. Here, evidently, is a plastic mass of 
 humanity, open to influences for good or evil. 
 
 Here is the unit of political life, and there are thou- 
 sands of other such units, side by side, covering the 
 whole country from one end to another. Is there 
 nothing for the conscientious Eriend to do under these 
 conditions? Can he not take his full active part in 
 such a meeting as this, without any loss of dignity or 
 self-respect or honesty of purpose, and do something 
 to bring his particular unit into a condition of hon- 
 esty and in accord with better standards of govern- 
 
92 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 iDent? It is the beginning of political work, and 
 having excluded himself through all these years from 
 political effort, he must now begin at the beginning; 
 work around his own door step; improve the politics 
 of his township or ward; give himself a standing 
 among his neighbors, and show himself worthy of 
 larger influence and position. By and by, perhaps, 
 he may extend his operations into the county organi- 
 zation, and when he has compassed the machinery of 
 this, and has shown that he possesses the qualities 
 essential to success and usefulness, his field of labor 
 may extend itself to the State, and by and by — ^who 
 knows? — some exalted position may ask him to occupy 
 itself. 
 
 Does this career sound rather uninviting? Does it 
 seem as if there was a great deal of thankless detail 
 and time-taking dradgery to be gone through before 
 the rewards come? If the piirpose is simply political 
 reward, it will not pay. The Friend whose desires 
 are purely selfish had better stay out of active politics. 
 I am not speaking for him. I am speaking for the 
 man who has some sense of duty; and while I doubt 
 not that there are perhaps a half dozen people in this 
 audience who would accept the United States Sena- 
 torship if it were brought them on a silver plate, I 
 trust also there is a still greater number who want 
 to do something for the State, not because it will 
 bring them honor and distinction, but because they 
 
The Friend in Politics. , 93 
 
 have the obligation, because the responsibilities of 
 citizenship have been placed upon them, and because 
 the privileges of citizenship are accorded to them 
 daily. 
 
 I do not know why it is that Friends in high public 
 positions are more numerous in England than in 
 America, — ^whether it is because conditions are differ- 
 ent over there, the machinery less exacting, or that 
 hereditary and social distinction is more sought as 
 a qualification for political places. I do not believe 
 that under the conditions which exist in Penn- 
 sylvania at the present time, the most exalted qualifi- 
 cations and the most perfect preparation will induce 
 managers of either political party to seek for high pre- 
 ferment men outside their own ranks of workers. 
 Were the two parties evenly divided, such might be 
 the case; but one of them can elect almost any reason- 
 ably reputable man by presenting him to the public, 
 and the other has no chance to elect any one at all. 
 
 So, my friends, you and I are not likely to be asked 
 to occupy a high official station; and looking at the 
 matter with perfect fairness, we could hardly com- 
 plain that we are not. Tor we have spent the most of 
 our lives in fighting against the tendency towards or- 
 ganization, and complaining that the ideals are con- 
 tinually lowering, and perhaps down in the bottom of 
 our hearts feeling that the whole thing is on a plane 
 to which we will never descend. While we are in this 
 
94 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 attitude of mind, it is not likely that we shall be 
 asked to receive rewards for which others have been 
 doing all the work. But if we are willing to attach 
 ourselves to the organization with which we feel most 
 in unity, do its unpleasant though not dishonest work, 
 tactfully adapt ourselves to the demands which will 
 inevitably be made upon us, not holding ourselves 
 aloof from active participation in the necessary ma- 
 chinery of politics, doing our local work first, and 
 extending our operations as opportunity offers, study- 
 ing more profoundly than the average politician the 
 demands of the situation and the trend of public 
 thought, with a fundamental basis of honest convic- 
 tion from which we cannot go astray, but holding our 
 prejudices in abeyance until we feel our grasp on the 
 situation and our power to control it; then we shall 
 begin to hear of Quaker members of Congress, and 
 Governors of States, and then we shall begin also to 
 appreciate that the machine is not necessarily and 
 always a bad machine, that it can be influenced peren- 
 nially and powerfully toward the elimination of evil 
 and the encouragement of high ideals. 
 
 There may be — and I suppose there are — certain 
 wards in the city of Philadelphia where such a policy 
 as this would be unavailing, where conditions are such 
 that honest effort would seem to have no influence at 
 all. But this certainly is not true in the country dis- 
 
The Friend in Politics. 95 
 
 tricts, nor in the great bulk of city wards. I do not 
 mean that anywhere the man would be successful 
 right away. He might fail a hundred times, but all 
 the time his power is growing and his influence being 
 exerted. He is making friends for his cause, and by 
 and by there is a party formed which must be taken 
 into account, and which grows in geometrical ratio. 
 A few intelligent and honest people often hold the 
 balance of power, and can afford to insist on measures 
 which in the beginning would seem to be entirely out 
 of reach. 
 
 It is instructive to notice the way reforms are 
 secured in American politics. A long and discour- 
 aging process of quiet work always precedes any 
 prominent change for the better. He who says that 
 the times are not propitious, or that the task is too 
 difficult, and so gives it up, does not read the past 
 aright. Does any one think that, had it not been for 
 the labors of Woolman, the sufferings of G-arrison, 
 and the writings of Whittier, Abraham Lincoln 
 would ever have issued the Emancipation Proclama- 
 tion of 1862? Any one who has worked in an insti- 
 tution has seen this process in a small way. Some 
 inveterate traditional abuse has taken hold of the 
 minds of the residents. The first suggestion of a 
 change is received with scoffing, but if it is right and 
 reasonable every succeeding suggestion gains atten- 
 
96 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 tion, and finally converts begin to come, and after 
 awhile the old abuse is taken away by some sudden 
 and unexpected movement. 
 
 So it is with the nation at large. Work goes 
 quietly on. The advocates at first are said to be 
 fanatics, are exciting unnecessary opposition, are ene- 
 mies of the cause which they wish to foster; but if the 
 purpose is a good one, other people who are not fana- 
 tics begin to see the righteousness of it. They do 
 not say very much; they go on with their every-day 
 life, but their minds are getting prepared for the 
 change, and in the fullness of time, often without a 
 warning, the whole nation wakes up to the fact that 
 the fanatics were advocating that which they all be- 
 lieve, and the thing is done. Napoleon used to say 
 that though a battle might last a whole day, there 
 were always just ten minutes in which it was either 
 won or lost, and that the secret of the success of the 
 great general was to know how to utilize these ten 
 minutes. So this initial preparation, this incipiency 
 of the reform movement, has its culmination in a 
 great and unexpected crisis, when a blow may be 
 struck for freedom or righteousness just at the right 
 moment, because that right moment is a development 
 of all the agencies that have gone before it. 
 
 This is the answer to the pessimism which seizes 
 many people. They see evil apparently grovwng and 
 
The Friend in Politics. 97 
 
 flourishing, and getting more and more intrenched 
 in law and custom. At the present time we cannot 
 shut our eyes to the disgraceful state of municipal 
 government in this country, and while, in taking a 
 large view of the situation, we cannot but admit that 
 our government, as a whole, is purer, our people bet- 
 ter and happier, and the cause of good more potent 
 than a hundred years ago, still, if we center our 
 minds on this one feature, there is, in certain par- 
 ticulars, gross deterioration. Is this to continue? 
 Judged by the recent past alone, it may; and, if the 
 leaders of it are wise enough to make the descent easy 
 and gradual, without arousing much fear of danger, 
 it may last for a long time. But quietly, underneath 
 this iceberg of corruption, the warm waves of Chris- 
 tian progress are doing their work, and some day it 
 will topple over. ■* 
 
 Trom this point of view, no good efforts are ever 
 wasted. This, I know, is a truism which people ac- 
 cept because they are told to, but which they cannot 
 believe except by faith. Nevertheless, I think I 
 may say that it is true. Our skepticism results from 
 the fact that we expect immediate results and are not 
 willing to abide the process of nature. Every good 
 act for a good cause unquestionably makes some con- 
 version to it, and in the fullness of time the crisis 
 comes, and the summation of all these good tenden- 
 
98 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 cies is evident in one great cataclysm. He who works 
 for an honest and efficient school director in the hum- 
 blest district of this great land, whether he succeeds 
 in his immediate object or not, is aiding in the tri- 
 umph of virtue and goodness. His work, with others', 
 makes possible emancipation proclamations from all 
 sorts of evil. 
 
 We Friends are apt to consider that the testimonies 
 and moral protests which we make are good for our- 
 selves rather than for the world at large. One of our 
 traditional queries in Philadelphia reads, " Do you 
 bear a faithful testimony against oaths, military 
 training, fraudulent transactions and lotteries ?" And 
 if none of our members have been frankly engaged in 
 these matters, we answer in the affirmative, and con- 
 gratulate ourselves on our advanced position. But if 
 we believe such customs are an antithesis of Chris- 
 tian teaching, they are bad for the world at large, and 
 not for ourselves only. If oaths are forbidden by 
 New Testament morality, then this whole nation is 
 daily suffering, because it employs them. If the mili- 
 tary spirit and the Christian spirit are working in dif- 
 ferent directions, then the prominence of the mili- 
 tary spirit is a great national evil. If the common 
 business transactions of a country are permeated by a 
 standard which permits unfair and untruthful opera- 
 
The Friend in Politics. 99 
 
 tions in ordinary trade, then the country is suffering, 
 no matter how clear we ourselves may be. And if 
 certain slot machines, and other contrivances for tak- 
 ing the pennies of boys, are really lotteries in dis- 
 guise, then the fact that we have never touched lot- 
 teries in our whole denominational history does not 
 settle the question for us. We are hardly bearing 
 faithful testimony against these matters by simply 
 abstaining from them. It becomes part of our mis- 
 sion to make ourselves heard in an emphatic voice 
 against them, as they affect others besides ourselves. 
 Part of this protest will be simply mor^l and educa- 
 tive, and I do not say that we are not doing our duty 
 in these respects, at least in part. But a great many 
 of these influences also have to be made by legisla- 
 tion, and the executive enforcement of laws already 
 made; and here comes in the field of politics. 
 Here, also, is the suggestion of usefulness for Friends 
 in this particular. Will not the demand of our query- 
 that we bear a faithful testimony, insist upon definite 
 and persistent political action ? Has it not been true 
 that we have done quite as much as is good for us in 
 the way of eulogizing the foresight and clear percep- 
 tions and righteous efforts of our fathers of the past 
 and of the corporate action of the Society of Eriends, 
 and have done entirely too little in the way of nerv- 
 
100 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 ing ourselves up to the path of seK-denial and per- 
 sistent filling of the line of duty hj wise participa- 
 tion in every-day politics ? 
 
 ^•" These are my principles," says the politician at 
 the conclusion of an eloquent address to his con- 
 stituents, in which he has expressed the most exalted 
 doctrines of political morality, " these are my prin- 
 ciples, but if they don't suit you, I can change them." 
 " These are my principles," says the honest man, who 
 believes most profoundly that principles are un- 
 changeable, " and I will not abate one jot or tittle of 
 them, no, not to save my life." Between the two 
 there seems to be a great gulf fixed. I do not think, 
 however, that it is impassable, but rather that its 
 passage is the great problem of modern American 
 political life. He is, of course, making a great mis- 
 take who shifts his principles to suit the views of any- 
 one. He commits not only an immoral act, but an 
 inexpedient one. For if there is any lesson which the 
 long pages of history teach us, it is that the right is 
 the expedient. It would have been a plausible thing 
 if a Christian martyr, being led out to the stake, had 
 said, " Jlj life can do more for the cause than my 
 death; I can swallow my scruples this one time, and 
 then go on and spread my religion through many de- 
 cades." It would have been plausible, I say, but it 
 would have been, as everyone now sees, a fatal error. 
 
The Friend in Politics. 101 
 
 His death for that little principle was not merely the 
 right thing to do, but it was also, for the sake of the 
 cause, a politic thing to do. Many a man has stood 
 straight for that which he knew to be right, alone and 
 surrounded by enemies, and without yielding a single 
 conviction, has seen the triumph in his own day. 
 Many another man, under similar circumstances, has 
 never seen the triumph at all, but his children, after 
 many generations, have appreciated that he did the 
 wisest thing possible. Utilitarianism is a catching 
 theory, and in its higher reaches as a theory I do not 
 propose to question it now, but it is refuge of the 
 coward and the opportunist, and is seK-condemned. 
 
 It is difficult to define the moral law, and perhaps 
 still more difficult to apply it ; but that there is a law, 
 graven in the very constitution of man, expressed in 
 his sacred writings, and almost self-evident in its ele- 
 mentary statements, cannot well be denied. It is as 
 inexorable as the law of gravitation, and demands 
 obedience more sternly and implicitly than any 
 tyrant's decree; its penalties cannot be evaded, and 
 its rewards come whether we seek them or not; it 
 governs the development of mankind as individuals 
 and as society; he who obeys it is in line with the 
 forces which are advancing humanity, and he who 
 opposes it lies athwart their path. If we only knew 
 this law in perfection, human duty would be deter- 
 
102 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 mined. We get as close to it as we can. These 
 things we call principles and convictions are our in- 
 terpretations of its behests. We cannot lay them 
 aside with safety to ourselves, and the backbone of all 
 our thinking and doing, if honest, must reside in 
 them. The politician whose backbone is of cartilage, 
 may bend and turn them to suit his whims or present 
 notions of advancement, but the man with a con- 
 science will stand by them, let them lead him to pro- 
 raotion, or contempt; to life, or death. 
 
 But the mistake we most often make is that we 
 place in this list of unchangeable convictions a lot of 
 prejudices and preferences, and then make stubborn- 
 ness take the place of devotion to duty. We hold 
 these preferences so ungraciously that we drive 
 others from their support, and then imagine that we 
 are martyrs to a high principle. It is a rare thing 
 to find an honest man who is also adaptable, who 
 knows where to draw the line between conviction and 
 method, and while holding stringently to the one, 
 yields the other to the exigencies of the practical 
 question. Some men can do it. Whether you ap- 
 prove or not of the principles of government of Presi- 
 dent Roosevelt, I think it will be admitted that his 
 life has been consistent in its advocacy of that which 
 he has believed, and yet he has always worked with 
 an organization as a loyal part of its machinery, has 
 
The Friend in Politics. 103 
 
 impressed it with his personality, and influenced it in 
 the line of his beliefs. While faithful to his convic- 
 tions, he has been a political success. And I take it 
 that many a thinking man in the country has been in- 
 duced by his example to believe in the possibility of 
 a politician vphose principles are not at the beck and 
 call of his constituents, and yet whose tact and per- 
 sonal power make him persona grata to the great 
 mass of his fellow-citizens, to whose prejudices and 
 weaknesses he may defer. 
 
 Such possibilities seem to lie in the path of anyone 
 on a larger or smaller scale, provided he has the quali- 
 ties which will bring success. If so, it ought to be 
 quite as much a matter of duty for him to take the 
 place to which his neighbors call him in political con- 
 vention or caucus as to attend his yearly meeting, or 
 reform the morals of his delinquent , associates. 
 
 There are a great many utilitarians who do not 
 know it. l<rinety-five per cent, of the argu- 
 ments for or against any institution involving ethi- 
 cal questions are based on the plea that good results 
 make a good cause, and that certain practices are es- 
 sential to civilization as it is constituted. I admit 
 that the line of argument which Friends have em- 
 ployed on the subject of war, if consistently applied 
 in other directions, would lead them into deep and 
 difficult places. I do not propose to try to extricate 
 
104 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 them. Neither am I now apologizing for their funda- 
 mental line of thought as expressed by Dymond and 
 as practiced by George Fox. I simply am stating 
 what seems to me to have always been their position 
 on matters as they have come up. I know, too, that 
 a man like John Bright, who had to come into contact 
 with these questions in a very practical way, would 
 not stand exactly with Jonathan Dymond. They are 
 more easily established in the study, by a man who 
 keeps himself separated from worldly activities, than 
 they are in the field of practical politics or active busi- 
 ness. And yet, I apprehend, we are going to hold to 
 them, and have so soaked our minds with the theory 
 of an uncompromising morality that we are not likely 
 to get away from it. I am not urging that we should, 
 and, though I see the difficulties of its application, 
 still I beheve in it. All that I claim is that we should 
 keep it within the limitations of moral questions, and 
 not permit that uncompromising and unyielding 
 spirit to enter into the realm where tact must be the 
 rule, and where compromises and exchanges, and the 
 spirit which yields something to get more, are the 
 fundamental necessities. 
 
 It is to me a matter of vast importance that this 
 double duty should be impressed especially upon our 
 younger Friends. A new generation is going out 
 into the world, different from any that have preceded 
 
The Friend in Politics. 105 
 
 it. Friends can never more be that exclusive body 
 which they have been in the past, shutting them- 
 selves off from activities which involve temptation, 
 and confining their exertions to charitable and philan- 
 thropic work, and to other efforts which do not touch 
 adversely their convictions. We cannot be in the 
 future what we have been in the past, and yet we do 
 not want to lose the old type. ISTor is it necessary that 
 it should be lost in its essential particulars. If faith- 
 fulness to convictions is adhered to under all circum- 
 stances, there will still be enough discipline in life to 
 refine and purify the spirits and make the morals and 
 character strong and virile. It is not a change of 
 type that we need, but a change of objects for which 
 we are wilhng to work earnestly and efficiently. And 
 a decay of character will come not as the result of 
 taking up new fields of activity, but as the result of 
 shirking any field of activity, in which it is right for 
 us to enter, because of dangers and difficulties in the 
 way. 
 
 This all refers to practical politics; but in the field 
 of theoretical politics Friends ought to find a work 
 equally useful, and perhaps more congenial. I do 
 not know that of recent times they have ever serious- 
 ly occupied it. There are a number of young men 
 now engaged in the study of political science, who 
 may prove themselves to be worthy successors of 
 
106 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 William Penn. There are those who claim that 
 theory and practice at the present time in this sub- 
 ject have no relation to each other, but they are like- 
 ly to prove as wrong as were the old herb doctors, 
 who decried the science of medicine, or the so-called 
 " practical " engineers who refuse to have anything 
 to do with mathematics. In the long run, practice 
 will be governed by theory, and it is of great import- 
 ance that this theory should be elaborated by men 
 who are competent to investigate its laws and take ac- 
 count of its conditions. 
 
 There therefore ought to be such a thing as a 
 Quaker theory of government. It was not merely 
 the personality of William Penn which gave to his 
 colony its fundamentals of peace and liberty and jus- 
 tice to the natives. These principles came from his 
 theology. The beginning of them was with George 
 Fox and not with William Penn, though the founder 
 of Quakerism probably was not well enough educated 
 to see the trend of his teaching in political directions. 
 It could not be that a man, who made as his corner- 
 stone the doctrine of divine guidance of the indi- 
 vidual, could create other than a commonwealth 
 devoted to civil and religious liberty. A man who was 
 willing to go to jail indefinitely rather than dis- 
 obey the scruple with regard to his hat, would 
 also develop as a political principle obedience to 
 a duty which demanded peace even at a sacrifice of 
 
The Friend in Politics. 107 
 
 what seemed common-sense in government. I do not 
 know that this necessary connection between Quaker 
 theology and Quaker principles of government, as il- 
 lustrated by Penn's experiment, has ever been fully 
 elaborated. Indeed, a recent biographer of Penn 
 concludes his book by the statement, " Sometimes he 
 was a great statesman, and other times he was a great 
 Quaker, but he was never both at the same time." I 
 think he has entirely mistaken the fundamental con- 
 ceptions of Penn's philosophy. To me it seems that 
 his statesmanship was a direct product of his Quaker- 
 ism. While, so far as I know, he never seriously at- 
 tempted the task of proving the connection, yet to a 
 certain extent, unconsciously perhaps, the develop- 
 ment from one to the other went on in his own mind. 
 The difference between New England and Pennsyl- 
 vania in the seventeenth century is simply the differ- 
 ence between Calvinism and Quakerism applied to 
 government. And if, after a control of three-quar- 
 ters of a century, the Quaker experiment seemed par- 
 tially to fail, it was largely due to the fact, if I can un- 
 derstand the conditions, that Friends ceased to grasp 
 these fundamental relations. They had no institu- 
 tions of learning which developed political scholar- 
 ship of a high grade. They were not philosophers, 
 and they lost the grip on affairs which the Oxford 
 education of Penn and Lloyd enabled them to take at 
 
108 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 first. They became, to a large extent, opportunists, 
 or rather, they placed in two water-tight sections 
 their religion and their politics, developing the first 
 along the line of conviction, and the other along the 
 line of opportunity. 
 
 The race of political philosophers seemed to be- 
 come extinct with the first generation; if we can re- 
 produce it in this, it would be a most interesting and 
 hopeful development. Plato's " Kepublie " and 
 More's " Utopia " constitute attempts to build states 
 on the basis of Greek philosophy and Renaissance 
 Christianity, respectively. Could we have a new 
 Utopia, written by some one who was permeated with 
 the spirit of George Fox, full also of modern philoso- 
 phy, and a knowledge of all that history can teach of 
 the development of institutions and the growth of 
 political ideas of the last three centuries? Here, it 
 seems to me, is a great field for some of our students. 
 Even should they not bring to it the powers of a Plato 
 or a More, any attempt would be a beginning in a 
 line of indefinite possibilities. 
 
 Herbert Spencer says that good conduct must al- 
 ways be based on right theory, and I do not know any 
 more valuable Quaker contribution to our country's 
 government at the present time than would be an 
 analysis of the situation as it exists, by a Friendly 
 philosopher, who could tell a priori the right course 
 
The Friend in Politics. 109 
 
 for our government to pursue in all matters which 
 touch, however remotely, the field of morals. 
 
 But some one asks, " What is the use ? Quaker 
 scruples can never be applied to government. You 
 cannot carry on practical affairs on the basis of the 
 pure morality of Christianity. Things must be made 
 right because they work, and not because they are in 
 accord with sound theory. It is thus that civiliza- 
 tion has been developed, and any attempt to work it 
 otherwise is simply a Tolstoyan and futile effort." 
 
 Much of this we shall have to grant. Penn's ex- 
 periment broke down in the face of conditions for 
 which he was not responsible, but which, nevertheless, 
 have not ceased to exist. To his doctrine of liberty 
 the nation moved up in less than a century, and the 
 Declaration of Independence was simply the asser- 
 tion of Penn's position, and the negative of the ITew 
 England statement and practice. But peace, as he 
 would have it, has not yet come, and if any man 
 would arbitrarily impose a pure standard upon our 
 nation, there would be another Quaker Experiment, 
 which would end in seeming disaster. So also the 
 abolition of the detective system, with all its mani- 
 fold iniquities, from the administration of justice, 
 would seem like a breakdown of all our courts, with 
 their many beneficent features. Business also, in 
 the minds of many, as at present organized, cannot be 
 
110 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 carried on in accord with the principles of a pure mor- 
 ality. 
 
 With the vast preponderance of evil thinking and 
 low-motived men in the world, some adaptation to 
 conditions seems to be necessary. The mathematician 
 computes the strain on the bridge; knowing the re- 
 sisting strength of iron, he determines just the 
 amount that is necessary in each separate piece to 
 carry the load. But the iron is full of flaws, the 
 load is variable, hurricanes arise unexpectedly, and 
 nature seems to make war with theory at every 
 point. And yet the theory is right as a basis, and the 
 bridge is built, having due regard, of course, to modi- 
 fying conditions, but also governed by the mathe- 
 matics of the study room. 
 
 Jiist in the same way a well-considered and proper- 
 ly buttressed theory of government, well thought out 
 by a Quaker philosopher, would have to be modified 
 by adaptation to existing circumstances, but it would 
 be, at the same time, a constant beacon light toward 
 which the practical politicians would find themselves 
 impelled to steer, perhaps for generations to come, as 
 they managed the affairs of the State. 
 
A COLONIAL PEACE CONTROVERSY.* 
 
 The defeat of that able, and, in many respects, use- 
 ful Quaker demagogue, David Lloyd, in 1710, by 
 what we would now call a " tidal wave," brought an 
 era of internal peace and prosperity to the Colony 
 of Pennsylvania. The year later, in response to a 
 demand from the English crown for an appropriation 
 in aid of the war with France, the Assembly voted 
 two thousand pounds " for the king's use," Isaac ISTor- 
 ris, a minister of high standing, explaining, " We did 
 not see it to be inconsistent with our principles to give 
 the Queen money, notwithstanding what use she 
 might put it to, that being not our part, but hers." 
 Eortunately for the Quaker experiment, other de- 
 mands of this nature did not soon follow. But this 
 precedent was used in 1740 and in the fifteen years 
 following, imtil the custom was so loaded up that it 
 fell of its own weight. The well-considered arrange- 
 ments of James Logan and his friends preserved not 
 only peace, but friendship with the Indians. The 
 broad principles of freedom on which the colony was 
 founded made it an attractive place for the perse- 
 cuted and liberty-loving people of Europe. The 
 great agricultural resources and the intense desire for 
 
 *Aii address given before the Friends' Historical Society, 1905. 
 
112 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 peace especially drew the Palatines, as the dwellers 
 in the Ehine Valley were then called. The govern- 
 ment was most economically administered, the total 
 expenses being a mere trifle. Gold and silver were 
 drained from the colony to pay the European bills of 
 a rapidly-growing population, but their places as cir- 
 culating mediums were supplied by an ingenious sys- 
 tem of paper money, issued by the government on the 
 credit of land and plate mortgaged by individuals to 
 redeem it. This was done sparingly and judiciously, 
 and the paper money of Pennsylvania, alone among 
 the colonies, never depreciated. 
 
 The public records of these golden days are too 
 quiet to be interesting. They deal with matters of 
 very trifling import, and justify the saying, " Happy 
 is the people whose annals are blank in history." The 
 Friends, who by this time were in the minority of the 
 population, still retained, through the aid of the Ger- 
 mans and the respect of all classes, a preponderating, 
 and, at times, imopposed influence in the popular leg- 
 islature. The idea that there was any incompatibil- 
 ity between Quakerism and politics had not gained 
 foothold. On the contrary, they felt the responsi- 
 bility of a great trust committed to them and looked 
 upon it as a part of their religious duties. While 
 they carefully separated church and state, and, so 
 far as can be ascertained, never allowed political dis- 
 
A Colonial Peace Controversy. 113 
 
 cussions in their meetings, yet the two could not fail 
 to influence each other, as, for instance, the text of a 
 minute of the yearly meeting became the text of a 
 preamble to a statute a few years later. Nothing 
 occurred, however, in these peaceful days, for a quar- 
 ter of a century, to test their principles. They had 
 come to an understanding on the question of oaths, 
 which, while it cannot be considered to be perfectly 
 satisfactory, exists to this day. They had repudiated 
 the laws established by William Penn on the subject 
 of capital punishment which confined that penalty to 
 the crime of murder only, and had adopted the Eng- 
 lish law of the time, which made it cover a dozen or 
 more offenses, — a decision which came back to trouble 
 them in later days, but which now seemed generally 
 satisfactory. So far as we know, there was no protest 
 against it, either by legislature or meeting, up to the 
 Revolution, and it was left for the anti-Quaker gov- 
 ernment of that time, under the lead of Franklin, to 
 re-enact Penn's statute. They were in the minority 
 in the city of Philadelphia, but the three great coun- 
 ties, Chester, Philadelphia and Bucks, were absolute- 
 ly in their control; for the German immigrants, 
 though in great numbers, did not remain among them, 
 but pressed towards the frontier, and the Scotch- 
 Irish, who were just beginning their great migration, 
 moved still further to the westward. Meeting houses 
 
114 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 and school houses dotted the three Quaker counties 
 at distances of a few miles, but little in the way of 
 higher education disturbed the evenness of the lives 
 of these farmers, and yet every one of them could 
 read and write. The general sanity of their beliefs 
 and the hberahty of their opinions, to which they had 
 been committed by the first generation of Friends, 
 preserved them to a large degree in the sweet reason- 
 ableness of temper which made their uneventful lives 
 models of simplicity and sincerity. And yet among 
 them, as the minutes of the monthly meetings abun- 
 dantly show, there were individual cases of gross im- 
 morality. On the whole, however, it is questionable 
 whether the history of the world has seen an illustra- 
 tion of democratic simplicity and unselfish devotion 
 to intelligent principles modelling so large a popu- 
 lation as existed in the province of Pennsylvania, 
 from 1712 to 1739. 
 
 During the latter years of this period, Andrew 
 Hamilton had been Speaker of the Assembly, and 
 practically leader of the colony. He was a lawyer 
 of great repute, the originator and architect of the 
 State House, begun during his administration, and, 
 though not a Friend, had their entire confidence. He 
 had just resigned his Speakership, and in so doing had 
 spoken of the vast, unexampled growth of population 
 and wealth in the colony, and the perfect peace which 
 
A Colonial Peace Controversy. 115 
 
 existed, not only between the colonists and all outside 
 bodies, but among themselves, which he rightly at- 
 tributed not to their fertile lands, or their great 
 rivers, or their geographical location, but to the con- 
 stitution and principles of William Penn. 
 
 His successor as Speaker of the Assembly was 
 John Kinsey, scarcely less conspicuous as a lawyer, 
 equally respected as a man, and, unlike his predeces- 
 sor, so identified with Friends in principles and mem- 
 bership, that for twenty years he was clerk of the 
 yearly meeting. In 1742 he was also made Chief 
 Justice of the State, and these three positions he filled 
 until his death in 1750. 
 
 As John Eansey was an important character in the 
 account which follows, a few words as to his life may 
 be inserted. He was bom in 1693, a descendant of 
 one of the little band of Friends who settled in Bur- 
 lington, in 1677. He studied law and practiced in 
 Wew Jersey, and almost immediately became a mem- 
 ber of the Assembly, and later Speaker of that body. 
 In 1725 he appeared in Philadelphia before Governor 
 Keith in the course of his profession, with his hat on. 
 The Grovemor ordered it removed by force. This 
 created such an excitement, that the ofiicial wisely 
 apologized, and ever after, in provincial times, 
 Quaker lawyers considered they had the right to 
 wear their hats in court. He moved to Phila- 
 
116 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 delphia in 1730, and was immediately elected to 
 the legislature, and at tke same time chosen as 
 clerk of the yearly meeting. The records of the 
 meeting for the twenty years following are full of 
 John Kinsey's work. His name was scarcely ever 
 absent from any important committee. The lit- 
 erary work of Friends of this time, including the 
 London Epistles, the collection of minutes for the 
 new discipline, the epistles to subordinate meet- 
 ings, was very largely done by him. During 
 most of the time he was engaged in gathering 
 materials for writing a history of the early days of 
 the province, which material afterwards passed over 
 into the hands of Samuel Smith. He was the medium 
 through whom the decisions of the meeting were con- 
 veyed to the public, as, note for instance, the follow- 
 ing minute of 1738: 
 
 " John Eansey was ordered to draw an advertise- 
 ment to be printed in the newspapers of Philadelphia, 
 in order to inform all whom it may concern that the 
 book lately published by Benjamin Lay was not pub- 
 lished by approbation of Friends; that he is not in 
 unity with us, and that his book contains false charges 
 as well against particular persons of our Society as 
 against Friends in general." 
 
 He died suddenly in 1750, in the midst of his use- 
 ful career, of an apoplectic stroke, at the age of fifty- 
 
A Colonial Peace Controversy. 117 
 
 seven. In the " Pennsylvania Gazette " of May lYth 
 of that year appeared the following notice (and such 
 things occurred very sparingly in the newspapers of 
 the day); written, in all probability, by Benjamin 
 Franklin : 
 
 " Friday last died suddenly at Burlington, in ISTew 
 Jersey, the Honorable John Kinsey, Esquire, Chief 
 Justice of the Province and Speaker of the General 
 Assembly. His long experience and great ability in 
 the management of public affairs, his skill in the laws, 
 and his unblemished integrity as a Judge, made his 
 life a very valuable and useful one. His death is, 
 therefore, justly lamented as a general loss." 
 
 From the point of view of a Friend, John Smith 
 speaks of him: 
 
 " The loss of this great and good man occasions a 
 general lamentation and to present appearances is ir- 
 repairable." 
 
 About the same time that John Kinsey took up the 
 Speakership, George Thomas wfas made Lieutenant- 
 Governor under the Penns. He knew very little 
 about the character of the people whom he came from 
 the West Indies to govern, but he was a man of abil- 
 ity and resources. If he had been appointed a few 
 years earlier in the times of peace he might have 
 quietly adjusted himself to the conditions; but, un- 
 fortunately, Spain and England, as a result of differ- 
 
118 Quaherism and Politics. 
 
 ences centering in the West Indies, concluded to have 
 a war, and Thomas was keen to support his royal mas- 
 ter. The two men, Kinsey and Thomas, were pitted 
 against each other as the leaders of the contest which 
 was to follow. Whether we consider skill in disputa- 
 tions or in political management, the end of the strug- 
 gle did not find the Quaker leader at any disadvan- 
 tage. 
 
 The contest began when, in the Tenth month, 
 1739, Governor Thomas sent a message to the Assem- 
 bly, suggesting that they make an appropriation to 
 protect the Province against attack, and assist the 
 king. The Assembly took the matter into serious 
 consideration, and explained in a somewhat lengthy 
 preface that they were all loyal subjects, lovers of 
 religion and liberty, and that one of the principal 
 motives which had brought them and their ancestors 
 to the Province was the full enjoyment of liberty of 
 conscience which was granted to them by their great 
 charter, and which the proprietor had pledged him- 
 self and his successors " according to the true intent 
 and meaning thereof, should be kept and remain with- 
 out any alterations inviolably for ever." And then 
 they add, " It is not unknown most of them were of 
 the people called Quakers, and principaled against 
 bearing arms in any case whatsoever." They admit 
 that the circumstances have changed, and that a great 
 
A Colonial Peace Controversy. 119 
 
 many who have come in since think it to be their 
 duty to fight in defense of their country, families and 
 estates. These also have the same right of liberty of 
 conscience with themselves. They do not condemn 
 the use of arms in others, but they object to any law 
 which would compel a man to bear arms against his 
 conscience; and they add that a law which forces 
 other people to bear arms and relieves the Quakers 
 would be inconsistent and partial. Then they make 
 a suggestion to the Governor, which, if he had been 
 wise, he would have adopted and dropped the matter. 
 They point out that the Charter gave him ample 
 authority to raise a troop himself, and that they did 
 not propose to interfere with his actions in this re- 
 spect, provided he did not trample upon anyone's 
 conscience. The clause of the Charter granting this 
 authority, which William Penn accepted, it may be 
 interesting to note : 
 
 " To the Proprietor aforesaid, his Heirs and As- 
 signs, by themselves or their Captains, or other their 
 Officers, to levy, muster, and train all Sorts of Men 
 of what Condition soever or wheresoever born in the 
 said Province of Pennsylvania for the time being, and 
 to make Warr and to pursue the Enemies & Robbers 
 aforesaid as well by Sea as by Land, even without the 
 Limits of the said Province, and by God's Assistance 
 to Vanquish and take them, and being taken to put 
 
120 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 them to Death by the Law of Warr, or to save them 
 at their Pleasure; And to do all, and every other 
 thing which unto the Charge and Office of a Captain 
 General of an Army belongeth, or hath accustomed 
 to belong, as fully and freely as any Captain General 
 of an Army hath ever had the same." 
 
 They wound up their address by the pious reflec- 
 tion: 
 
 " IsTot doubting but that Wee shall share in that 
 Protection Our Gracious Sovereign denys not even 
 to the meanest of His Subjects; And having at the 
 same time a due dependence on that Power which 
 not only calms the raging Waves of the Sea, but setts 
 Limits beyond which they cannot pass; And remem- 
 bering the Words of the sacred Text, That ' Except 
 the Lord keep the City the Watchman waketh but in 
 vain.' " 
 
 We find in this paper several interesting indica- 
 tions of the state of feeling among Friends on the 
 subject of war at this date. One was that they were 
 unequivocally opposed to all war under all circum- 
 stances; another, that they had no words of con- 
 demnation for those who from good motives thought 
 and acted differently, and, thirdly, that their reliance 
 was upon a divine Providence who, they believed, 
 would interfere for their protection. 
 
 The Governor was not disposed to recede from the 
 
A Colonial Peace Controversy. 121 
 
 contest. In an epistle equally lengthy he called their 
 attention to the fact that they were representatives 
 of the whole people ; that he had no right to look into 
 their personal religious persuasions, but that it was 
 their duty as representatives to protect a rich 
 Province from invaders. He did not wish to infringe 
 any of their consciences, nor to introduce persecu- 
 tion, for he himself was a great friend of liberty. 
 " But," he said, " as the world is now circumstanced, 
 no purity of heart or set of religious principles will 
 protect us from the enemy." The Assembly had 
 recognized this in the institution of courts and juries. 
 He told them that they would condemn " little 
 rogues " to death for breaking into their houses, and 
 yet they would not use similar means on a larger 
 scale for meeting the more organized attacks upon 
 their property. He had not been unaware of the 
 privileges granted to him by the Charter, and the 
 very fact that William Penn was willing to accept 
 the powers of a Captain-General under this Charter 
 indicated his opinions as to the necessity of bearing 
 arms in defense of his government. Then he puts in 
 a little attack at their trusting in Providence and un- 
 willingness to exert themselves. He says: 
 
 " Every Man that acknowledges the Superintend- 
 ence of one Supreme Being in the Affairs of the 
 World, must be sensible that without His Blessing all 
 
122 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 we do will come to nothing; and yet we build, we 
 plant, we sow, and we send Ships to Sea, conclud- 
 ing that these are necessary means for accom- 
 plishing the Ends desired. But that we should do 
 all these, and at the same time expect that God shall 
 fight our Battles, without preparing ourselves the 
 necessary means for our Defence, I confess can be 
 no more reconciled to my understanding than that 
 Because the Lord stills the raging Waves of the Sea, 
 the Seamen may therefore leave the Sails of the Ship 
 standing, and go to sleep m a Storm; Or that Watch- 
 men are therefore unnecessary, because Except the 
 Lord keep the City the Watchman waketh but in 
 vain." 
 
 The Assembly returned to the attack, and article 
 by article, replied to the Governor's address. They 
 showed that their position inland from the sea, pro- 
 tected by friendly colonies to the north, east and 
 south, made them in no danger of being attacked. 
 Consequently the Governor's argument for the need 
 of defense had no bearing on the case. They will 
 not admit the justice of the comparison between the 
 " little rogue " and the " great iavaders." Their ar- 
 gument is this: 
 
 " And yet it is Easy to discover the Difference be- 
 tween killing a Soldier, fighting (perhaps) in Obedi- 
 ence to the Commands of his Sovereign, and who 
 may, possibly, think himself in the Discharge of his 
 
A Colonial Peace Controversy. 123 
 
 Duty, and executing a Burglar who broke into our 
 Houses, plundered us of our Goods, and perhaps 
 would have murdered too, if he could not otherwise 
 have accomplished his Ends, who must know at the 
 Time of the Commission of the Fact, It was a viola- 
 tion of Laws human and divine, and that he there- 
 by justly rendered himself obnoxious to the Punish- 
 ment which ensued." 
 
 They would evidently have made a stronger case if 
 their attitude towards capital punishment had per- 
 mitted them to say something more of the sacredness 
 of human life; but, having just enacted laws inflicting 
 the penalty of death for burglary, rape, counterfeit- 
 ing and other crimes, they could hardly say that they 
 had any objection to the taking of life per se. They 
 believe, however, that an Almighty Power does su- 
 perintend the government of the world, and that he 
 will protect the principles of religion which are agree- 
 able to his will. As to William Penn's being a be- 
 liever ia war, they state, with some sarcasm, that 
 they probably know as much about his opinions as 
 the Governor does. They say, " he not only pro- 
 fessed himself a Quaker, and wrote in their favor, 
 but particularly against wars and fighting." As to 
 the comparison between the preparation for storms 
 at sea and harvests on land, and self-defense in the 
 time of danger, their argument is not as satisfactory 
 as it might be. It is as follows: 
 
124 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 " By a law almost as old as the Creation, Building, 
 Planting, Sowing, and other parts of Agriculture be- 
 came necessary for the Sustenance of Life ; And so to 
 those who would traffick in Parts beyond the Seas, 
 Ships and Seamen were requisite; the Nature of 
 whose undertaking obliged them to Industry in dis- 
 charge of their Duty as well as for their own Safety, 
 and not attended with any Injury to others; But be- 
 cause we may lawfully build, plant, sow, or send 
 Ships to Sea, or that because it is necessary for Sea- 
 men to take care of a Ship in a storm, that therefore 
 it is consistent with Christianity to defend ourselves 
 at the Expense of the Lives of our Pellow-Creatures, 
 tho' our Enemies, is not equally evident to us; And 
 yet if others think the Arguments forcible, such have 
 their Liberty." 
 
 The Governor, in a couple of days, returned to the 
 attack. He reproved them for their acrimony, 
 which, he says, he little expected from men of their 
 principles, and declares he will not engage in the dis- 
 cussion in that spirit. He thanks them sarcastically 
 for their description of the geography of the Prov- 
 ince, which he intimates he is not entirely unac- 
 quainted with. And then he again takes up the 
 question of the burglar, where he evidently thinks he 
 has a point : 
 
 " If a Burglar acts contrary to the Laws of Chris- 
 tianity and of the land in breaking open your Houses, 
 
A Colonial Peace Controversy. 125 
 
 and by those Laws you are justified in putting him to 
 Death; and if a soldier acts contrary to the Laws of 
 Christianity (as he does according to your own prin- 
 ciples) and the Laws of Nations, in plundering your 
 Houses and murdering your Families, it will be diffi- 
 cult to shew why you may not as justly put the latter 
 to Death as the former. The Will of the Prince, or 
 the mistake of the Soldier, can have nothing to do in 
 determining the moral Good or Evil of the Action." 
 
 He points to their early appropriation of money 
 for the King's use in manifest response to a demand 
 for war funds, and, admitting that he does not know 
 very much about William Penn's writings, he adds : 
 
 " As Actions are the best Evidences of a Man's 
 Thoughts, your first Proprietor's acceptance of a 
 Military Charge, his devolving it upon his Lieuten- 
 ants, and his Commission to a Person to command a 
 Fort at ISTewcastle, which I have under his own Hand 
 writing, are sufficient Proofs to me of his Opinion; 
 and tho' I have a very high Kegard for that Gentle- 
 man's Character, render it altogether unnecessary to 
 examine his Writings, if he has wrote on that sub- 
 ject." 
 
 And not without force, he replies in conclusion : 
 
 " For I believe it will be still thought as little con- 
 sistent with reason to expect we shall be protected 
 from an enemy without preparing the necessary 
 
126 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 Means for Defence, as it would be to expect Grain 
 without Sowing, or Fruit without Planting, and so in 
 other Instances." 
 
 The Assembly contented itseK with a general reply 
 to this, stating that they had no delight in con- 
 troversy; that they did not believe the Province was 
 in danger; that the early appropriations of money for 
 warlike purposes did not prove their utility; that 
 they were steadfastly loyal to King George, and that 
 on the basis of these well-known principles had al- 
 ways enjoyed the protection of the Crown, and that 
 the Province would receive no ill effects from their 
 lack of legislation. 
 
 Then the Governor replies in a final argument, 
 and asks the question which has never been an- 
 swered : " If your principles will not allow you to pass 
 a bill for establishing a militia, if they will not allow 
 you to secure the navigation of a river by building a 
 fort, if they will not allow you to provide armies for 
 the defence of the inhabitants, if they will not allow 
 you to raise men for his Majesty's service for distress- 
 ing an insolent enemy, is it calumny to say your 
 principles are inconsistent with the ends of govern- 
 ment ? " 
 
 There was a veiled irony in many of the Assem- 
 bly's replies, which, I suppose, came from the pen 
 of John Kinsey, and which delighted the men 
 who, in the coffee-houses of Philadelphia, followed 
 
A Colonial Peace Controversy. 12 Y 
 
 the controversy with great interest. As, for in- 
 stance, when they said that the Province had pros- 
 pered under the Quaker management before Gov- 
 ernor Thomas had anything to do with it, and 
 probably would in the future; "though some Gov- 
 ernors have been as uneasy and as willing, and 
 as ready to find fault and suggest dangers as him- 
 self." Or again, as the election approached, "If 
 we have committed any mistakes, the time draws 
 near in which our constituents, if they think it neces- 
 sary, may amend their choice, and the time also 
 draws nigh in which your (counselors' and govern- 
 or's) mistakes may be amended by a succeeding Gov- 
 ernor. Permit us to congratulate our country on 
 both." 
 
 During the course of the controversy, parties were 
 gradually forming, and this thrust and counterthrust 
 of arguments were simply appeals to the constitu- 
 ents; for there were no editorial comments in the 
 scanty papers of those days by which pubHc opinion 
 was influenced. The arguments were passed around 
 by word of mouth or by written manuscript, and in 
 many a coffee house or country tavern, and doubtless 
 also on the steps of the meeting houses after the 
 assembly was dismissed, they were repeated and illus- 
 trated with ever-increasing emphasis. 
 
 ISTot all Friends took the position that defensive 
 war was inconsistent with Christianity. James 
 
128 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 Logan was the leader of a considerable company of 
 young and well-to-do Philadelphians who openly 
 espoused the other side. But at present they were 
 opposed to the Governor's pretensions, and worked 
 with their associates of the yearly meeting. 
 
 James Logan in the spring of 1741 contributed to 
 the yearly meeting his advice that all Friends who 
 were conscientious about voting money for warlike 
 purposes should decline their places in the Legisla- 
 ture, a suggestion which the yearly meeting refused 
 even to have read. When one Friend tried to urge 
 Logan's views his neighbor plucked him by the coat- 
 tail and said, " Sit thee down, Robert, thou art single 
 (alone) in this matter." 
 
 That the Governor's threat to drive Friends from 
 the Assembly was not purely an empty one, is shown 
 by a letter which he wrote to the English Govern- 
 ment, considerably misrepresenting the situation, and 
 recommending that all Quakers be made ineligible to 
 oificial situations. This was intended to be private, 
 but a friend of the Assembly got possession of it in 
 England, and sent a copy to Philadelphia. Great was 
 the wrath of the men who for half a century had 
 felt themselves responsible for the conduct of afEairs, 
 and under whose management had developed the 
 most thriving Province of the new world. 
 
 The " Gentlemen's Party," which was the title 
 that the Governor's friends took to themselves, also- 
 
A Colonial Peace Controversy. 129 
 
 girded themselves for the contest, and in the fall 
 election of 1742 there was a great street fight in 
 Philadelphia, the actual participants of which were 
 a number of sailors for the Gentlemen's Party and a 
 bunch of hard-fisted Germans for the Quakers. It 
 is unnecessary to add that the Quakers triumphed 
 both in the street contest and at the polls, and rather 
 increased than diminished their great majority in the 
 Assembly. 
 
 They also struck the Governor at another point. 
 He was promised a salary by the Penns, whose agent 
 he was, but this salary had to be voted by the Assem- 
 bly. During the stringency of the contest the As- 
 sembly always forgot to place such an item in their 
 appropriation bills, and for several years he nursed 
 his wrath in poverty. But now being beaten at the 
 polls he began to show signs of yielding. He signed 
 a bill which he had hitherto opposed, and a little 
 salary was granted him. He signed another, and the 
 Assembly began to feel still more generous. Final- 
 ly he gave way altogether, and all his arrears were 
 paid. He got along very pleasantly with the As- 
 sembly during the rest of his official career. He was 
 completely tamed. Fortunately, the Spanish war 
 was short, and the French war which followed was 
 not of such a stringent character as to make the de- 
 mand for aid from Pennsylvania imperative. 
 
 The net results of the contest were a large increase 
 
130 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 of liberty for the people of Pennsylvania; the per- 
 fect maintenance of their anti-martial principles; the 
 defeat of the Gentlemen's Party at their own politi- 
 cal game; the increasing strength among the people 
 of the Quaker leaders in government; the triumph of 
 economy and simpKcity in the management of pub- 
 lic affairs. John Kinsey's letters, full on the one 
 hand of pious reflections, and on the other, of adroit 
 political argument, had carried the day. The 
 " Country Party," as his friends were generally 
 called, had become supreme. One by one the claims 
 of the proprietors — who were now farming Pennsyl- 
 vania for what they could get from it, in a very differ- 
 ent spirit from that of their high-minded father — 
 were cut down. The possibility of gaining politi- 
 cal ends without the sacrifice of principles was 
 begianing to answer the taunt of Governor Thomas 
 that their theories were inconsistent with govern- 
 ment. In 1747 Benjamin Franklin writes of the 
 Friends as " that wealthy and powerful body of peo- 
 ple who have ever since the war governed our elec- 
 tions and filled almost every seat in the Assembly." 
 Evidently they were good politicians, and the contest 
 with the Governor had resulted in a strengthening of 
 their lines. 
 
 John Kinsey died in 1750. He had no successor 
 capable of performing the double duty of leading his 
 yearly meeting as an acknowledged exponent of its 
 
A Colonial Peace Controversy. 131 
 
 principles, and of showing the way along which his 
 political party could go to victory. Isaac !Norris, 
 2d, who succeeded him as Speaker, and who was a 
 man of the highest integrity and ability, did not have 
 the standing among Friends which his predecessor 
 had, and the leadership of the Country Party went 
 more and more into the hands of Benjamin Frank- 
 lin, who did not at all sympathize with the ethical 
 principles of Friends, though he was in close accord 
 with their political views. 
 
 It has often been asked and never, perhaps, quite 
 satisfactorily answered, how it was that the Quakers 
 with their small numbers managed to maintain the 
 ascendency in the Legislature which they did through 
 all these discussions. It was owing partly to the fact 
 that the Quaker counties, Chester, Philadelphia and 
 Bucks, had disproportionate numbers of members. 
 That is, the new counties to the west did not receive 
 their full quota of membership as fast as they were 
 settled. 
 
 For additional reasons for the Quaker success in 
 politics, we may find some clue in a letter written by 
 Dr. William Smith, afterwards Provost of the Uni- 
 versity of Pennsylvania, in 1755. He estimates the 
 inhabitants of the Province at 220,000, of whom one- 
 half were Germans, and about 40,000 Quakers. He 
 says that the first generation of Quakers were an hon- 
 est, sober and thoughtful people, who gave to the 
 
132 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 Province an excellent government, and he adnoita 
 that the great bulk of these out of the Legislature are 
 still conscientious on the subject of wax, but that the 
 leaders are working things for their own political ad- 
 vantage, without much regard to principles. They 
 maintain themselves in power by two sets of influ- 
 ences. In the first place, the yearly meeting comes 
 just before the fall elections, and constitutes what we 
 would now call a " Quaker Primary." In the second 
 place, they manipulate the German vote, which read- 
 ily outweighs all others. They succeed in this from 
 the influence of Christopher Sauer, and his publica- 
 tions in the German language. Sauer is a IMennon- 
 ite, in sympathy with the Quakers on the subject of 
 war, and of unbounded influence among the Ger- 
 mans. The Germans are deluded with the idea that 
 the Governor's party would establish military con- 
 scriptions and heavy taxes, which they had fled from 
 Germany to escape. He also asserts that the estab- 
 lishment of a State militia would be used to reduce 
 Quaker influence among the people, and that 
 this is the real reason that they are afraid 
 of it. And in conclusion he recommends that 
 the Province can only be protected from French 
 invasion by pledging all those who sit in the Assem- 
 bly to take an oath of allegiance ; by taking away the 
 suffrage from all Germans who cannot speak the Eng- 
 lish language; by sending among them Protestant 
 
A Colonial Peace Controversy. 133 
 
 ministers and school masters; and by prohibiting the 
 circulation of newspapers, almanacs or other periodi- 
 cals printed in a foreign language. 
 
 These are the statements of a strong political op- 
 ponent and must be received with considerable allow- 
 ance. There is, however, a fragment of truth in all 
 of them, and by recourse to them we can probably see 
 how the " Quaker Machine " was maintained. 
 
 As to yearly meeting activities, they were exclu- 
 sively outside the sessions of the meeting. Not one 
 trace of any political movement — unless we may call 
 opposition to slavery and other moral offenses politi- 
 cal — ever crept into the sessions of the yearly meet- 
 ing itself, but political arrangements were probably 
 made among the members as individuals. I do not 
 know any evidence that this was going on, but I do 
 not think it is at all unreasonable to believe that it 
 was. In a body so well disciplined as the Friends in 
 those days were, and so thoroughly committed to gov- 
 ernment, it can hardly be expected that the views of 
 those who were leaders, alike in church and state, 
 should not be circulated among the membership at 
 these annual gatherings and have much influence. 
 
 There is no doubt also that the large German vote 
 went on the same side of the question, and that Chris- 
 topher Sauer was a warm and efficient ally. We 
 have it on the authority of an Epistle of Explanation 
 written by the quarterly meeting of Philadelphia, in 
 
134 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 1755, to the Friends in London, that " our former 
 representatives were, at our last election, chosen 
 throughout the Province by the greatest majority 
 ever known, without accounting the freemen who are 
 foreigners, on whose credulity and ignorance it has 
 been unjustly asserted that we have industriously and 
 artfully imposed. And this was done, not only with- 
 out the solicitation, but in some instances without the 
 privity or approbation of some that were chosen." 
 
 It is perfectly natural, and nothing to the dis- 
 credit of Friends that the Germans should vote with 
 them. That they carefully nursed this vote, and did 
 not throw away the advantage which they had, may 
 be readily assumed. They were good politicians be- 
 cause they felt their responsibility, and did not mean 
 to part with, as the result of calumny and misrepre- 
 sentation, the powers which they had assumed at the 
 beginning of the government, and for which they 
 held themselves accountable only to the people. 
 
 Dr. Fothergill, who probably voiced the opinion of 
 a good many sober Friends of the day, while fully 
 admitting the righteousness of the cause of John 
 Kinsey and his friends, did not quite like the temper 
 of their epistles. He says, " Your cause is undoubt- 
 edly good, but I am afraid you discover a little more 
 warmth than is quite consistent with the moderation 
 we profess. The arguments made use of by the As- 
 
A Colonial Peace Controversy. 135 
 
 sembly are strong and cogent, but the Governor 
 justly accuses you of too mucli acrimony." 
 
 An interesting little piece of by-play may close this 
 account. Israel Pemberton, Jr., who succeeded 
 John Kinsey as clerk of the yearly meeting, and who 
 was afterwards known as the " King of the Quak- 
 ers," in the midst of the exciting contest of 1739, 
 criticised the Governor most severely in a company 
 of which Alexander Graydon (he whose memoirs we 
 read with so much interest) was a member. He said 
 that it was the Governor's design to overturn the 
 Constitution, and reduce them to the King's govern- 
 ment; that the Governor carried on the debate with 
 the Assembly as if a few friends were chatting it over 
 a table; that he had no doubt that the Governor 
 would use his influence in England to set the Assem- 
 bly in the wrong, and that he would make an unjust 
 representation of the matter. Graydon narrated 
 this conversation to the Governor, and the next day 
 told Pemberton so, upon which Pemberton said he 
 was glad of it; that he would not make any apology, 
 for it was a good thing that these truths should come 
 to the Governor's knowledge, for his sycophants who 
 lived around him would never tell him, and that he 
 would prove that the Governor said that he 
 would bring matters to extremities. This would not 
 now seem a very serious offence, but the Gov- 
 
136 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 ernor was rash and issued a warrant for the 
 arrest of Pemberton. After some discussion in 
 the council as to the legality of this war- 
 rant, it was allowed to proceed. The Supreme 
 Court interfered, however, with the serving of 
 the warrant, issued a writ of habeas corpus, and or- 
 dered that Israel Pemberton, Jr., should not be 
 called before the council, which simply indicates that 
 the court and council were on different sides of the 
 political controversy. The Governor declared this 
 writ illegal, and again ordered the sheriff to serve the 
 warrant, who reported " that Mr. Pemberton read 
 the warrant and called it nonsense; that he, the 
 sheriff, being ordered by the secretary to behave 
 toward Mr. Pemberton with civility, had permitted 
 him to go out of his sight in the house of John Kin- 
 sey, Esq., after his word given, that he would not 
 escape, and that he notwithstanding, had escaped." 
 The Governor would not excuse the sheriff, and 
 Pemberton was held in legal confinement, the 
 Governor having come to the conclusion that the 
 writ of the Supreme Court was illegal, under the cir- 
 cumstances. He therefore instructed the sheriff 
 again to find Pemberton, but he had gone to Chester. 
 However, he came back the next day. The sheriff 
 then reports in these words the trouble which Israel 
 gave him in the attempt to serve the warrant : 
 
 " That yesterday about twelve of the Clock he 
 
A Colonial Peace Controversy. 137 
 
 came to Town; his Deputy gave him a Warrant from 
 the Governor to take Mr. Pemberton, Junr. ; that he 
 went to Mr. Pemberton's House about one of the 
 clock, and had answer that he was not in town; he 
 went again about three of the Clock, and had answer 
 that he was gone out; he went this morning about 
 three-quarters of an hour after Eight in the morning, 
 and asked his Clerk or Book Keeper if Mr. Pember- 
 ton was at home, who said he was, and went to some 
 other Apartment of the House, as he thought, to see 
 for his Master, but returned and said his Master was 
 in bed; Mr. Robinson went to another Door of the 
 House, and asked Mrs. Pemberton if Mr. Pemberton 
 was within, who said he was in Bed; Mr. Kobinson 
 asked what time he would be up, and had answer he 
 would in half an hour; he went towards Mr. Pember- 
 ton's House about twelve of the Clock, and in his 
 going down Chestnut Street, by John Miller's at the 
 Sign of the City of Dublin, he saw Mr. Pemberton 
 standing on the Platform at his own Door, but when 
 he had got so far as Pront street, he saw Mr. Pembei- 
 ton tack about and go into his House, and since has 
 seen nothing of him." 
 
 Evidently the Governor was making himself 
 ridiculous, and the Quaker was getting the better of 
 the manoeuvres. An intermediary was found in An- 
 drew Hamilton, the Speaker of the Assembly, who 
 said that Israel Pemberton, Sr., was very uneasy " at 
 
138 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 his son's being compelled to keep his house for fear 
 of being taken by the sheriff, to the great prejudice 
 of his business," and the warrant was withdrawn. 
 
 It is very easy to sit down with the 'New Testa- 
 ment and elaborate a conviaeing argument against 
 war. It is much more difficult when the responsi- 
 bilities of government are thrown upon you to act 
 consistently with such an argument. The Friends 
 of these times were, it seems to me, rather groping 
 towards a method of putting their principles into 
 practice. They were going over ground which many 
 of us have had to go over again and again in defining 
 the Quaker position. Why are wars wrong? Is it 
 because we are never to resist evil ? That is the posi- 
 tion of Count Tolstoi, but it never has been ours. Is 
 it wrong because war involves the taking of life ? 
 But the Friends of 1740 had given up that conten- 
 tion. Is it wrong, as Jonathan Dymond says, because 
 resistance to evil must never employ criminal meth- 
 ods ? If so, can a line be drawn between resisting a 
 burglar who attempts to rob our house, by crippling 
 or imprisoning him, and resistance to an army which 
 in a more organized way would also despoil our 
 goods? What are the limits to force to be used in 
 self-defence ? Assuming that killing is always 
 wrong, is taking property belonging to others always 
 wrong ? But governments are doing this continually 
 in the way of taxes. Is war wrong simply because it 
 
A Colonial Peace Controversy. 139 
 
 excites eyil passions in the participants? But this 
 may not always be true. Are the immoral methods 
 employed by war made moral by the motives of the 
 participants and the justice of their causes? These 
 questions are worth thinking over, and I for one feel 
 a great deal of sympathy with these Friends of the 
 days from 1740 to 1756, who so skillfully and suc- 
 cessfully maintained their side of the controyersy, 
 and yet whose actions are somewhat open to criticism 
 from the stern moralist. 
 
THE WELSH SETTLERS OF HAVERFORD. 
 
 Under the strict guard of Friends in Philadel- 
 phia is an old limp-leather book which contains, in an 
 angular and sometimes almost illegible hand, the 
 business proceedings of the Welsh Friends who es- 
 tablished the " Barony " on the banks of the Schuyl- 
 kill. The records of Haverford Monthly Meeting 
 begin with " the 10th day of the Second month 
 (April), 1684," when, among other interesting events 
 of similar character, " Humphrey Ellis and Gwen 
 Rees haveing declared their Intention of marriage be- 
 fore this meeting, John Bevan and John Humphrey 
 were ordered to Inspect to their Clearness, and to 
 bring an acc't thereof to the next meeting," and 
 again, a month later, " Humphrey Ellis & Grwen 
 Rees haveihg laid their Intention of Marriage the 
 Second time before this meeting, and nothing but 
 clearness found on each side, are. Left to their free- 
 dom to proceed therein." 
 
 After the double announcement, Humphrey and 
 Gwen stood up in a public meeting and announced 
 that they took each other in marriage, " promising 
 with divine assistance to be unto her (him) a lov- 
 ing and faithful husband (wife) until death shall sep- 
 arate us." Then the certificate was signed by them- 
 selves and by their friends as witnesses, and they 
 
The Welsh Settlers of Haverford. 141 
 
 went to their farm in the woods to conquer it for civ- 
 ilization. The previous course of the courtship was 
 hedged about with difficulty. We find the following 
 directions : " That all young men among Friends 
 make known their intention to their parents or guard- 
 ians before they acquaint the woman's relations, and 
 make it known to the woman's parents or guardians 
 before they speak to them, and if any do otherwise 
 they shall condemn the same." 
 
 The Barony is now a rich and popular suburb of 
 Philadelphia. Its ancient woodlands are selling at 
 thousands of dollars an acre, and the descendants of 
 the settlers are among the prominent men of the old 
 town. Their Welsh origiii is only betrayed by the 
 proper names, but Jones and Thomas and Koberts, 
 Pugh (ap Hugh) and Price (ap Pees) and Bevan (ap 
 Evan), and the line of stations along the Pennsyl- 
 vania Railroad — Merion, Narberth, Wynnewood, 
 Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Padnor and St. David's, are 
 their permanent memorials. 
 
 They had been land owners in Wales, some " gen- 
 tlemen " and some " yeomen," and they bought their 
 land of William Penn, 40,000 contiguous acres. 
 They scattered themselves over this great territory, 
 beginning in West Philadelphia and extending north- 
 ward and westward for twenty miles. Their original 
 idea was to control everything within the limits, to 
 retain their language, customs and nationality, and 
 
142 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 to manage their civil affairs, as well as ecclesiastical, 
 through their monthly meeting. So we find, inter- 
 spersed with religious directions, " It is ordered by 
 the Meeting, & Consent of the Inhabitants of the 
 Township of Haverford & Radnor in pursuance of a 
 Law in that Case made yt ye Inhabitants of ye sd 
 two Townships should pay 1 s. per hundred towards 
 ye takeing of Woolves." It may be inferred that the 
 " hundred " refers to acres owned, and not to wolves 
 destroyed. 
 
 In-order to retain a means of access to the city they 
 must needs guarantee a sum to the ferryman, so three 
 Friends " are ordered by this meting to collect the 
 mony due to Nathaniel Mull, upon the account of 
 ye ferry, to view their accounts & see what is due 
 him, & to bring an account thereof to the next 
 monthly meeting." 
 
 Mull was not the name of the ferryman, but the 
 Cymric penman stumbled at the strange name — Mul- 
 lineux — and cut it short. 
 
 Another minute requires that the land owners 
 should maintain their line fences. 
 
 They were not able to attend to all their secular 
 affairs, however, without the aid of the central gov- 
 ernment, for in 1685 the Council records " the Com- 
 plaint of ye friends of Hertford (Haverford) against 
 the Indians for ye Eapine and Destruction of their 
 
The Welsh Settlers of Haverford. 143 
 
 Hoggs." The Council sent for " ye respective In- 
 dian Kings with all speed," and the trouble ended. 
 
 These Welshmen were many of them owners of 
 considerable property. They brought with them their 
 household furniture — great oak pieces, which have 
 come down to the present day. Their napkins were 
 of the finest linen, and their plate was solid. Copper 
 and pewter ware were abundant, and cash was not 
 lacking. 
 
 They almost immediately began speculating in Sus- 
 quehanna lands, and they had been here but about a 
 dozen years when out of their abundance they were 
 able to contribute to the impoverished ISTew England- 
 ers. " The Friends appointed to collect the subscrip- 
 tion of friends towards ye Releif of distressed friends 
 & others in New England bring an acc't yt they col- 
 lected & paid to the use aforesaid ye sume of 60£, 
 14s, lid according to ye appointment of ye meet- 
 ing." 
 
 Their own unfortunate neighbors were also well 
 looked after. " That 15s. be given to help — — — in 
 his present necessity, 5s. out of the Collection of each 
 
 meeting. are ordered to see the same paid 
 
 ye said and Likewise to Collect him out of 
 
 each meeting effects to buy him a Cow and Calfe at 
 Spring, provided he doth repay it if he be able here- 
 after, It being his proposall to friends when he re- 
 quested the same." 
 
144 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 " It was ordered as foUowetli That Three pounds 
 of the Collection of Haverf ord and Meirion is ordered 
 
 by this meeting to be paid to assist to build 
 
 him a House, vixt. Thirty shillings of each Town- 
 ship." 
 
 " It is ordered by this Meeting that Gadder Mor- 
 gan and James Thomas do receive the voluntary gift 
 
 of Meirion Meeting to assist in his present 
 
 distress, he haveiag sustained loss by fires : and Rich- 
 ard Ormes and Stephen Bevan for Radnor and Maur- 
 ice Lleullyn and David Humphrey of Haverford to 
 receive the voluntary subscription of each of the said 
 Towneships to the said use." 
 
 JSTor did they intend that their Barony should be a 
 refuge for defaulters from their old home. " Our 
 friend John Bevan, haveing laid before this Meeting 
 That divers persons came over here, and left debts un- 
 paid, in those parts and places yt they came from, and 
 the Creditors complaining against ye said persons that 
 they did not receive any satisfaction from them for 
 ye said debts, the ffriends yt are appointed by this 
 meeting to see to such affairs, are desired to deal with 
 them. If there be any such belonging to this meet- 
 ing." 
 
 Who were these Welsh people, and vs^hy did they 
 come to Pennsylvania ? As they were fond of stating 
 in their public addresses, they were the descendants 
 of the ancient Britons, a warlike and proud people 
 
The Welsh Settlers of Haverford. 145 
 
 "who had never been conquered. Their racial devo- 
 tion was deep-seated, their love of their country and 
 language and customs they supposed to be ineradica- 
 ble. Yet, when George Fox journeyed thitherward, 
 in 1653, he was received with marked favor. A non- 
 conformist minister of Denbighshire heard of him and 
 sent two members of the congregation " to trie the 
 Quakers." Fox tells us the result: " When these 
 triers came down among us the power of the Lord 
 overcame them, and they were both of them con- 
 vinced of the truth. So they stayed some time with 
 lis and then returned into Wales, where afterwards 
 one of them departed from his convincement, but the 
 other, whose name was John ap John, abode in the 
 truth and received a gift in the ministry to which he 
 continued faithful." 
 
 John ap John became the apostle of Quakerism in 
 Wales. He aided in buying the Barony of William 
 Penn, but he never came to America. He died at a 
 great age, venerated as a patriarch of the flock. 
 
 Equally influential with him was Eichard Davies. 
 He met an itinerant preacher who had some influence 
 Avith him, but his Quakerism seems to have arisen 
 almost spontaneously. The thee and the thou, the 
 refusal to doff the hat, to swear, and to make forcible 
 resistance, the confident belief in direct Divine teach- 
 ing as a practical guide in all matters, the silent wor- 
 ship and the unconquerable sense of duty, sprang 
 
146 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 fully developed into being. He went to London, to 
 enter into business, but the need of his Welsh neigh- 
 bors pressed on his heart. He tells the story of his 
 courtship (?) preparatory to his migration: " So the 
 Lord gave me a little time, and He alone provided an 
 help-meet for me; for I prayed unto Him that she 
 might be of His own providing, for it was not yet 
 manifest to me where she was, or who she was. But 
 one time, as I was at Horslydown meeting in South- 
 ark, I heard a woman Friend open her mouth, by 
 way of testimony, against an evil ranting spirit, that 
 did oppose Eriends much in those days. It came to 
 me from the Lord, that that woman was to be my 
 wife, and to go vsdth me to the country, and to be an 
 help-meet for me. After meeting I drew somewhat 
 near to her, but spoke nothing, nor took any acquaint- 
 ance with her, nor did I know when or where I should 
 see her again. I was very willing to let the Lord 
 order it as it seemed best to Himself, and therein I 
 was easy; and in time the Lord brought us acquainted 
 with one another, and she confessed she had some 
 sight of the same thing that I had seen concerning 
 her. So after some time we parted, and I was freely 
 resigned to the will of God; and when we came 
 together again, I told her, if the Lord did order her 
 to be my wife, she must come with me to a strange 
 country, where there were no Friends but what God 
 in time might call and gather to Himself. Upon a 
 
The Welsh Settlers of Eaverford. 14Y 
 
 little consideration she said, if the Lord should order 
 it so, she must go with her husband, though it were 
 to the wilderness; and being somewhat sensible of 
 the workings of God upon her spirit in this matter, 
 she was willing to condescend in her mind to what He 
 wrought in her; but by hearkening to one who had 
 not well weighed the matter, she became disobedient 
 to what God had revealed to her, which brought great 
 sorrow and trouble upon her. I went to see her in 
 this poor condition, and I rested satisfied with the will 
 of God in this concern, being freely resigned, if the 
 Lord had wrought the same thing in her, as was in me, 
 to receive her as His gift to me; and after some time, 
 we waiting upon the Lord together, she arose and 
 declared before me, and the other Friend who had 
 begot doubts and reasonings in her mind, that in the 
 name and power of God she consented to be my wife, 
 and to go along vidth me, whither the Lord should 
 order us; and I said, in the fear of the Lord, I receive 
 thee as the gift of God to me. So I rested satisfied 
 with the will of God, for a farther accomplishment 
 of it." 
 
 The young couple went zealously to work. Con- 
 verts came quickly and in multitudes, and most of 
 them were in jail in a few months. The fighting and 
 unconquered Britons became peace-loving and unre- 
 sisting Friends. Charles and Thomas Lloyd, of a 
 good old family, and Oxford graduates, neighbors of 
 
148 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 Davies, joined them. Thomas became the leader of 
 the Welshmen in Pennsylvania, and, after Penn, the 
 most conspicuous man of the colony, and its Deputy 
 Governor. 
 
 Nowhere in Great Britaia did persecution rage 
 more fiercely than in Worth Wales. It was easy to 
 offer the oath of allegiance, and then fines and prisons 
 would logically follow. A priest, with whom Davies 
 had an argument, had the oath tendered to the 
 Quaker leader, and he spent some years in jail as a 
 result. The Lloyds had their full share. Such as 
 were not sent to prison had their property swept away 
 by unreasonable distraints to recover small fines. 
 Their kinsmen, instigated by rage or gain, became 
 their persecutors. There seemed no evidence that 
 this would not go on indefinitely. 
 
 Then a haven of hope was opened. William Penn 
 received his grant of Pennsylvania. He wished to 
 call it New Wales, and claimed a Welsh origin for 
 his own name. If his co-religionists could have a real 
 New Wales, free from persecution, where they could 
 educate their children in a pure environment, and re- 
 tain their ancient customs, modified by their new 
 teachings, they would emigrate bodily. 
 
 So a committee of them, including John ap John, 
 Davies, and Charles Lloyd, saw Penn in London. 
 They asked for a Barony, as they afterwards 
 expressed it, " Within which all causes, quarrels. 
 
The Welsh Settlers of Haverford. 149 
 
 crimes and disputes might be tried and wholly deter- 
 mined by officers, magistrates and juries of our lan- 
 guage." They would have representation in the 
 Provincial Assembly, but all their local officers would 
 be commissioned by themselves alone. 
 
 Penn seems to have satisfied them. He had ample 
 powers imder the Charter of Charles II., and he gave 
 them promises which, if reduced to writing, appear 
 to have been lost. It was his personal influence that 
 brought them, as Hugh Roberts wrote him ten years 
 later. " I can truly say that many of us had never 
 come here but because of the love and unity and con- 
 fidence we had in thee." 
 
 The stream began to come in 1682, prior to or in 
 company with the proprietor. Dr. Thomas Wynne, 
 the great physician of the colony, was a passenger on 
 " The Welcome." Thomas Lloyd came in on the 
 same ship with Francis Daniel Pastorius, a kindred 
 spirit who was leading his Rhinelanders to German- 
 town. The largest immigration was in 1684, and in 
 the years immediately succeeding they overflowed the 
 " Welsh Tract " and settled Uwchlan, Charlestown 
 and ISTantmeal. Several of their leading men had 
 taken five thousand acres as trustees. These tracts 
 were subdivided to suit the smaller holders, and l^Tew 
 Wales became an established fact. They had the 
 usual difficulties of settlers in a woodland, but Phila- 
 delphia was near by, game was plentiful, and the In- 
 
150 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 dians were friendly. Cabins, soon replaced by more 
 substantial houses of stone, quickly arose. To marry 
 their young people and to provide burial places for 
 their dead were the first communal duties, to be fol- 
 lowed in a little time by the building of meeting 
 houses, when the private houses became insufficient. 
 The most ornate Friends' meeting house in Pennsyl- 
 vania, if old prints are to be relied on, was that at 
 Merion, built in 1695. 
 
 There is no doubt that Penn meant to keep his 
 promise of a Barony, though what amount of local 
 government they were to be granted does not appear. 
 He wrote his surveyor, Thomas Holmes, in March, 
 1684, that settlers in Wales were coming in large 
 numbers, sufficient to occupy 40,000 acres, and " I do 
 charge thee and strictly require thee to lay out said 
 tract." 
 
 ISTevertheless the immigrants were at fijst deeply 
 disappointed ^vith the result. They had to give up the 
 idea of their own juries and officials as distinct from 
 those of the province, and in a little time parts of 
 their tract which they had not taken up, began to be 
 surveyed and sold to English settlers. At first their 
 protest was successful and the sales were annulled. 
 This was after Penn had returned to England, and 
 had made Thomas Lloyd his deputy. But Lloyd had 
 no desire for political prominence, and in 1688 Penn 
 sent over John Blackwell, an old Cromwellian sol- 
 
The Welsh Settlers of Haverford. 151 
 
 dier, as Governor. He was a well-intentioned but 
 tactless and stubborn man, who set everything awry. 
 The Friends, under Lloyd's lead, protested most vehe- 
 mently against his movements, and practically tied 
 up the government. The wrangliag partly centered 
 about the Welsh tract. 
 
 This tract had been entirely in Philadelphia 
 County. A petition came up from the people of Ches- 
 ter County, adjoining, asking that as they were few 
 in number a portion of these Welshmen should be 
 added to them to reduce the individual contributions 
 to the county funds. The petition probably appealed 
 to Blackwell as a wise measure to divide his most per- 
 sistent opponents and so lessen their political power. 
 They would be in a minority in either county. Sev- 
 eral worthy people deposed that they had heard Wil- 
 liam Penn say that he had intended to run the line 
 through the tract, and a map was found which seemed 
 to support the view. The Welshmen protested vig- 
 orously, and asked at least for time to carry the ques- 
 tion to England. They appealed to their ancient un- 
 derstanding with the Proprietary, but Blackwell by 
 this time had a sympathetic majority in the Council 
 well in hand, and he forced the division through. 
 Marion Township was placed on one side of the line, 
 and Haverford and Radnor on the other, and there 
 they remain to this day. The Welshmen had refused 
 to have anything to do with government (except to 
 
152 Quakerism, and Politics. 
 
 elect members of the provincial legislature) or to sit 
 on juries or to take part in affairs in either county,, 
 but they none the less strenuously opposed this begin- 
 ning of a separation. The heat engendered by this 
 and other matters made Blackwell's life miserable. 
 Thomas Lloyd was a Quaker minister, and, as Black- 
 well said, his fellow members had an " inordinate 
 affection " for him. He could unresistingly go to 
 jail in Wales in obedience to an unjust but established 
 government. But in Pennsylvania he felt his respon- 
 sibilities and knew his rights. Colonel Markham, who 
 sided with the Deputy Governor, thus narrates one of 
 the several scenes of confusion: 
 
 " The Govr declared ye Councill to be adjourned 
 till ye next counciU day, viz: to ye fifth day of ye 
 same week, at nine of ye Clock, at ye same place ; and 
 Kose up out of his place to depart accordingly; upon 
 wch severall of ye members of ye Councill departed. 
 But divers remayned and a great deale of confused 
 noise & clamor was Expressed at & without the doore 
 of ye Govrs roome, where ye Councill had sate, wch 
 occasioned persons (passing by in the streets) to stand 
 still to heare, which ye Govr observing, desired ye 
 sayd Tho Lloyd would forbeare such lowd talking, 
 telling him he must not suffer such doings, but would 
 take a Course to Suppresse it, & shutt ye Doore. So 
 he went away, attended with severall of ye members 
 
The Welsh Settlers of Haverford. 153 
 
 of ye Councill, others staying behind with ye Gov- 
 ernor." 
 
 The Welsh refused to abide by the decision of the 
 Council to divide their tract. At the next election of 
 Councillors they all cast their votes for John Eckley, 
 of Philadelphia County, and sent him up to claim 
 membership. Amid much feeling the Governor and 
 his majority ruled him to be ineligible. They also 
 tept out Thomas Lloyd for refusal to comply with 
 their wishes, and Samuel Eichardson for an attack on 
 the Governor's authority, notwithstanding his pro- 
 test, " I will not withdraw. I was not brought hither 
 tj thee, and I will not go out by thy order. I was 
 sent by the people, and thou hast no power to put me 
 •out." One of the councillors, lamenting the confu- 
 sion, said, " We have two governors, one inside the 
 ■council chamber, and one (Thomas Lloyd) outside." 
 As soon as the condition could reach the ears of Wil- 
 liam Penn, he recalled Blackwell, who, doubtless with 
 sincerity, told the CouncU, " 'Tis a good day. I have 
 given and I do unfeignedly give God thanks for it 
 (which are not vain words), for to say no worse, I 
 was very unequally yoked." Lloyd came in as the 
 head of the government and retained the place till 
 his death. 
 
 But the Welsh had not taken up their whole tract, 
 and in 1690 men of other nationalities came in with 
 
154 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 claims. The settlers made an eloquent appeal: " We, 
 the Inhabitants of the Welsh Tract in the Province 
 of Pennsylvania in America, being descended of the 
 ancient Britons, who always in the Land of our Na- 
 tivity, under the crown of England, have enjoyed 
 that Liberty and privilege as to have our bounds and 
 limits by ourselves within which all causes, quarrels, 
 crimes, and titles were tryed, and wholly determined 
 by officers, magistrates, and jurors of our own lan- 
 guage, which were our equals; having our faces 
 towards these counties, made motion to our Governor, 
 that we might enjoy the same here, — to the Latent we 
 might live together here, and enjoy our Liberty and 
 Devotion; which thing was soon granted us before we 
 came into these parts." 
 
 It was decided that if the Welshmen would pay all 
 quit-rents since 1684 they might preserve their tract 
 intact. They refused the proposition, but expressed 
 a willingness to be responsible for the whole 40,000 
 acres in the future. This was declined. When it was 
 too late they reconsidered the matter and agreed to 
 accept the conditions. But the commissions to others 
 had already been executed. Their political integrity 
 had been broken, and now their social comradeship 
 was threatened. The Barony was about to pass away, 
 but the " Great Welsh Tract " became a well marked 
 section of the province, leading in enterprise and 
 prosperity, up to the time of the Revolution. 
 
The Welsh Settlers of Haverford. 155 
 
 The Friends' meetings were more considerate of 
 Welsh sentiment than the State authorities. The 
 Quarterly Meeting of Chester, in 1700, sent word to 
 the Haverford Friends that as they were in their 
 county they should be joined to their meeting. But 
 Haverford protested, and the Philadelphia meeting 
 strongly supported them: " Whereas Haverford 
 meeting hath belonged to this Quarterly Meeting 
 from the first settlement & for several other reasons 
 this meeting unanimously desire that the Monthly 
 Meeting at Haverford may not be separated from 
 this our Quarterly Meeting " ; and so it remains to 
 this day. 
 
 The separateness of the Welsh settlers now rapidly 
 departed. Business, marriages, politics drew them 
 into close association with the English, and while 
 their brethren in the old country retained their lan- 
 guage, the new country Welshmen, who had so 
 pathetically appealed for national peculiarity, had 
 before the Revolution lost it all. 
 
 In this conflict they were in a difficult position. 
 The most of them had retained their Quaker connec- 
 tion. But the old Briton blood moved in their young 
 men, and many of them joined the American army. 
 The rest, whatever their sympathies, adopted, in the 
 contest, a position of passive neutrality for con- 
 science' sake. 
 
 In the dark vrinter of 1777-'8, when the British 
 
156 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 army was in Philadelphia, and the starving soldiers of 
 Washington were at Valley Forge and Eadnor, the 
 Welsh Tract lay between the two. It was fair game 
 for both. The British foraged without apology. The 
 Americans offered pay, but the Quakers would not 
 take it. Between the two needy armies they lost 
 everything movable. The carefully compiled records 
 of the meeting tell of the number of cattle and 
 horses and hogs, of sheaves of wheat and bushels of 
 potatoes, of blankets and garments, of pots and ket- 
 tles, with their estimated value, taken from each 
 farmer. Thus we have : " Taken from Isaac Davies 
 of Haverford, by a detachment of the British army 
 commanded by Earl ComwalKs, the 12th of 12th 
 month, 1777, £284 — 10 — 2," the articles being 
 mentioned in great detail; and as if he had not lost 
 sufficiently: " Taken from Isaac Davies by the army 
 under George Washington, commonly called the 
 American Army, £5 — 17." John Roberts lost, at 
 the hands of the American army, live stock, grain, 
 and household matters valued at £500; but there was 
 an especial reason for this, and his future sufferings 
 were more tragical. He was a farmer and miller of 
 Merion. At the time of the Revolution he was in his 
 sixties, the almsgiver and kindly adviser of his neigh- 
 borhood, of unquestioned integrity and British sym- 
 pathies. He had just completed a collection for suf- 
 fering Friends in New England. Some of his friends 
 
The Welsh Settlers of Haverford. 157 
 
 in Philadelphia had been exiled to Virginia in a 
 high-handed way hy the State government, to pre- 
 vent their extending aid to the British army then 
 advancing toward the city from the South. He went 
 to Sir William Howe and asked for a company of sol- 
 diers to release them — a request which the British 
 commander denied. The meetings and his neighbors 
 disapproved of his action, which became public, and to 
 escape real or fancied danger he took refuge within 
 the British lines, after they had occupied Philadel- 
 phia. When Comwallis, in December, 1117, organ- 
 ized the foraging party to Merion and Haverford, just 
 noted, he took Koberts along as an unwilling guide. 
 
 The next spring the British evacuated Philadel- 
 phia, and all the open tories went with them to New 
 York, knowing the fate that awaited them if cap- 
 tured by the irate mob, which, for a little time, ruled 
 the city. Roberts quietly remained. He was tried 
 before Justice McKean and convicted of high trea- 
 son. A thousand men of high standing, including his 
 jurors and generals in the American army, attested 
 to his character, and petitioned for his pardon with- 
 out avail. His meeting refused to interfere, because 
 it could not sanction the actions for which he had 
 been tried, but its members joined heartily in the 
 efforts to save him from the gallows. He expressed 
 his penitence and quietly met his fate. 
 
 Such is the story, as the records of the Quaker 
 
158 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 meetings show it. The court records were lost, and 
 in order to account for the treason various reports 
 have been circulated — that he mixed glass with the 
 flour which he furnished to the American army, that 
 he poisoned their springs, and so on. On the face of 
 them these are false, but recently the manuscript 
 notes of Judge McKean, embracing the case, have 
 been recovered from a Philadelphia junk-shop, and 
 the veracity of the ecclesiastical records has been 
 established. 
 
HOW THE FKIENDS FREED THEIE SLAVES. 
 
 The last slaves held by Pennsylvania Quakers 
 were manumitted, wherever legally possible, about 
 the time of the battle of Yorktown. 
 
 It had taken nearly one hundred years of agitation 
 to bring about this result. The German Quakers, of 
 Germantown, had protested in 1688: "There is a 
 liberty of conscience here which is right and reason- 
 able, and there ought to be likewise liberty of the 
 body, except for evil-doers, which is another case. 
 But to bring men hither, or to rob and sell them 
 against their will, we stand against." From that time 
 on the movement for abolition had advanced. In 
 1696 the Yearly Meeting advised not "to encourage 
 the bringing in of any more negroes, and that such 
 as have negroes be careful of them." 
 
 The Friends of Chester County were particularly 
 urgent, and ceased not to press the matter on the 
 attention of the Yearly Meeting. In 1711 they re- 
 ported that " their meeting was dissatisfied with 
 Friends buying and encouraging the bringing of 
 negroes." The next year they asked that London 
 Yearly Meeting, as the central body, do something to 
 bring about some concerted action of all Friends the 
 world over. But London was not ready, and in 1714 
 Philadelphia returns to the matter: 
 
 " We also received your advice about negro slaves, 
 
160 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 and we are one with you that the multiplying of 
 them may be of a dangerous consequence, and there- 
 fore a law was made in Pennsylvania, laying twenty 
 pounds' duty upon every one imported there, which 
 law the Queen was pleased to disannul. We could 
 heartily wish that a way might be found to stop the 
 bringing in more here ; or, at least, that Eriends may 
 be less concerned in buying or selling of any that may 
 be brought in; and hope for your assistance with the 
 government if any farther law should be made dis- 
 couraging the importation. We know not of any 
 Friend amongst us that has any hand or concern in 
 bringing any out of their own country; and we are 
 of the same mind with you, that the practice is not 
 commendable nor allowable amongst Friends ; and we 
 take the freedom to acquaint you, that our request 
 unto you was, that you would be pleased to consult 
 or advise with Friends in other plantations, where 
 they are more numerous than with us; because they 
 hold a correspondence with you, but not with us, and 
 your meeting may better prevail with them, and your 
 advice prove more effectual." 
 
 In 1715, and again in 1716, the Chester Friends 
 return to the charge : " The buying and selling of 
 negroes gives great encouragement for bringing them- 
 in." To this the Yearly Meeting would only reply 
 advising its members to avoid such purchases, and 
 added: " This is only caution, not censure." 
 
How the Friends Freed Their Slaves. 161 
 
 Matters stood until 1729, when again, in response 
 to another request from Chester, the meeting minuted 
 " that Friends ought to be very cautious of making 
 any such purchase for the future, it being disagree- 
 able to the sense of this meeting." Advices to this 
 effect were now given almost yearly, and in 1Y43 the 
 following was added to the Queries : " Do Friends 
 observe the former advice of our Yearly Meeting not 
 to encourage the importation of negroes or to buy 
 them after imported ? " which, a few years later, was 
 strengthened into : " Are Friends clear of importing 
 or buying negroes, and do they use those well which 
 they are possessed of by inheritance or otherwise, 
 endeavoring to train them up in the principles of the 
 Christian religion ? " 
 
 Thus the sentiment against slavery was fostered, 
 and in 1758 the Yearly Meeting was brought to 
 decisive action. After rejecting several compromises, 
 tending to limit the advice as heretofore to the slave 
 trade, the adopted minute stood: " This meeting fer-\ 
 vently desires . . . that we would steadily observe ' 
 the injunction of our Lord and Master to do unto 
 others as we would they should do unto us, which it 
 now appears unto this meeting would induce such 
 Friends who have slaves to set them at liberty, mak- 
 ing a Christian provision for them according to their 
 ages." A committee was appointed, with John Wool- 
 man its most active worker, to extend Christian 
 
162 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 advice to slaveholders and persuade them to release 
 their slaves. 
 
 For twenty years after this date there are many 
 records on the minutes of monthly meetings of volun- 
 tary or persuaded manumissions. They vs^ere made 
 individually matters of record, to prevent the same 
 negro ever again being seized. 
 
 Some, however, held out, and in 1775, in the midst 
 of the throes of the outbreaking war, the meeting 
 decided it had waited long enough: " Such members 
 as continued to hold slaves are to be testified against 
 as other transgressors are by the rules of our Disci- 
 pHne for other immoral, unjust and reproachful con- 
 duct." This was an instruction to the monthly meet- 
 ings to take up each case individually, and, after care- 
 ful labor and much persuasion, if he still remained 
 recalcitrant, to disown him by the Society. This 
 was done in some refractory cases. Others were com- 
 plicated. Slaves were owned by minors; or husband 
 and wife were not both members, and legal manumis- 
 sion could not be obtained, or other perplexing ques- 
 tions had to be settled: 
 
 " Most of the Friends appointed to inquire into the 
 circumstances of several negro slaves on whom it is 
 
 thought J M had a claim, report they 
 
 have done accordingly, and are informed that his 
 brother, S M , deceased, by his last will 
 
How the Friends Freed Their Slaves. 163 
 
 gave the remainder of his estate to him after the bills 
 and legacies were paid, and appointed him executor 
 of his will, and that his said brother had two negro 
 men and one negro boy slaves, but that he had not 
 taken upon him the administration of the estate, and 
 did not intend to do it on account of the negroes. 
 They advised him that in case administration should 
 be granted to another person, and there should be 
 other estate enough to pay the debts and legacies 
 (which he seemed not to doubt of) that he should dis- 
 charge the administrator from the negroes and set 
 them free, otherwise if they should be sold to pay 
 debts and legacies, and he receive the remainder of 
 the estate, he would be the cause of their continua- 
 tion in bondage, which advice being considered is 
 approved of." 
 
 Faithfully and patiently the work was performed, 
 and the end of the war saw the end of slavery in 
 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and the voluntary 
 compensation of many slaves for their labor while in 
 bondage. This was advised in 1779 : " The state of 
 the oppressed people who have been held by any of 
 us in captivity and slavery, calls for a deep inquiry 
 and close examination how far we are clear of with- 
 holding from them what, under such an exercise, may 
 open to view as their just right." Arbitrators decided 
 the amount, and the former slaveholders liquidated 
 an undemanded debt. 
 
164 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 The years prior to the war had seen the freedom 
 of all slaves held by faithful Quaker masters. Those 
 who in 1Y75 were brought to face the alternative of 
 manumission or ejectment were such as had resisted 
 all previous appeals to their sense of right or justice. 
 They were either unconvinced of wrongdoing, or 
 were unwilling to make the pecuniary sacrifice. 
 Whether morally or financially recalcitrant, the mat- 
 ter must now be pressed home to them, and the Quar- 
 terly Meetings took up their cases individually in 
 serious earnest. There was to be no haste and no 
 scolding, only kindly personal exhortation, continued 
 time and again, till the papers were signed or the 
 stiff-necked slaveholder pronounced incorrigible. In 
 Bucks Quarterly Meeting James Moon was on the 
 Committee, and in a manuscript journal, from which 
 I shall freely quote, he gives in detail the visits paid 
 and the negroes freed. We can wish that he had gone 
 further and told the arguments on both sides, for 
 many an interesting conference must have preceded 
 the decision in the old Quaker homesteads of Bucks 
 County. From other sources we may gather that the 
 recusant would plead the good treatment accorded 
 to the negroes, his constant care to feed, clothe and 
 educate them, and the fact that they could not be 
 better off in freedom, for slavery was never a harsh 
 institution among the Pennsylvania Friends. He 
 would relate the possible ruin of himself and family 
 
How the Friends Freed Their Slaves. 165 
 
 by the loss, and ask for time to make the adjustment. 
 He would agree to free them by will, or after a term 
 of years. To all of this they would considerately lis- 
 ten and gently reply, removing difficulties, suggest- 
 ing remedies, calling attention to the already accrued 
 debt for past unpaid services, but above all appealing 
 to the eternal principle that one man had no right to 
 hold another in bondage; that the slave had a just 
 claim to the liberty of making his own bargains and 
 moving about at his will; that slavery was an in- 
 iquitous institution, and that no spiritual blessings 
 could attend that man who in any degree counte- 
 nanced it; that the peace of mind to be gained by 
 self-sacrifice was worth more than all the possible 
 rewards of wickedness; that no considerations of expe- 
 diency should weigh aught against pure goodness and 
 Christian rectitude. As we may read in this journal, 
 these arguments in the great majority of cases pro- 
 duced the results, and the slaveholder consented. 
 Immediately a form of manumission prepared to 
 meet the case was at hand, and the negroes were 
 legally and finally freed. 
 
 The opening of the journal tells their proposed 
 method of procedure: 
 
 " DivEES of the Committee appointed by the Quar- 
 terly Meeting of Bucks with Several Friends ap- 
 pointed by the respective Monthly Meetings to Visit 
 those of our Members who hold their fellow Men in 
 
166 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 bondage & Captivity Met together at Middletown 
 Meeting House the 7th of the 3 Month 1776 And 
 after a Conference on this Weighty Subject it was 
 Concluded to give a more Close and Solid Attention 
 thereto in Order that this good Work may be for- 
 warded & Friends more & more dipt into a proper & 
 Lively Exercise for the Advancement of this part of 
 our Testimony. It was also proposed & agreed that 
 Friends should procure a particular & Distinct Ac- 
 count of the names of the Masters & of their Dispo- 
 sition in this respect The Negroes Names and their 
 Ages, & Whether they Can Read or Write, what they 
 are Capable of & what their Masters are Willing 
 to do. 
 
 " The Committee then Agreed to Meet at the 
 House of Joshua Richardson at 8 OClock the next 
 Morning." 
 
 The first day's work included four visits, and the 
 . net result was four freed men from two masters. The 
 other two were left for further care : 
 
 " Agreeable to Appointment the following Friends 
 Met at the Said Joshua Richardson's, Viz: Samuel 
 Eastbum, Mcholas Wain, James Moon, Thomas Sta- 
 pler, Jonathan Earkbride, William Richardson & 
 William Blakey. And Joshua Richardson was pos- 
 sessed of a ISTegroe Man named Joseph Primis, Aged 
 66 Years & a MuUatto Man named Joseph, Aged 
 about 22 Tears, both of whom he has set free by In- 
 
How the Friends Freed Their Slaves. 167 
 
 struments of Writing Dated the 8th of the 3d Month, 
 1776. 
 
 " The same friends then went to Jonathan Willet's 
 who hath 7 slaves, Viz: A ISTegroe Man Named 
 Prince, ahont 30 Years of Age, an Orderly Man; A 
 Negroe Woman named Dinah, Aged about 26 Years; 
 & five Children, Viz, 4 girls, One Aged about 10 
 years, Named Lydia; another about 7 years of Age 
 Named Margaret; another about 5, named Isabel; 
 another about 3, Named Jude, & a Boy about 3 or 4 
 Months Old Named Stacy. Jonathan seemed pretty 
 well Disposed & has friends Advice under Considera- 
 tion. 
 
 " From thence they proceeded to Joseph Thorn- 
 ton's, who has 5 Slaves, Viz, A Negro Man about 31 
 Years of Age, Named Cuff; A Negro Woman about 
 24 Years Old, Named Silvia, & 3 Children, Viz: One 
 Boy about 6 years old. Named Pompey, & 2 Girls, 
 One about 4 Years Old Named Kose, the other about 
 2 Years Old, named Violet. Joseph & his Wife 
 neither of them appearing Willing to Set them at 
 Liberty, it is thought Necessary friends Care be Con- 
 tinued towards them. 
 
 " Then went forward to John Plumley's, who had 
 2 Negroe Men, one Aged about 100 Years Named 
 Cudgjo, the other about 52 Years, Named Ishmael, 
 both of whom he has Set at Liberty by Instruments 
 of Writing Dated the 8th of the 3d Month, 1776. 
 
168 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 " Then agreed to Meet at John Jenk's the next 
 
 "b-^ 
 
 Two discouraging visits began the next day's work, 
 but two days spent with the third offender, days we 
 may well imagine full of earnest entreaty, and dur- 
 ing which the freedom of the time permitted them 
 to remain as guests, brought their reward in five more 
 free men: 
 
 " According to Appointment the same friends Met 
 at the Said John Jenk's, who has One ISTegroe ISTamed 
 James, Aged about 52 Years, but doth not appear 
 disposed to Set him at Liberty, therefore further 
 Labour is thought necessary. 
 
 " Then proceeded to Isaac Stackhouse's, who hath 
 One l^egroe Man, named Ishmaiel, about 56 Years of 
 Age, and Isaac not appearing at present in a Dispo- 
 sition to Set him at Liberty, it is thought necessary 
 friends Care be continued to him. 
 
 " Then Samuel Eastburn, Nicholas Wain, James 
 Moon & William Blakey went to Bristol to Ennion 
 William's, and spent that Evening with him & his 
 Wife on the Same Occasion, & staid till 2d. Day 
 Morning, being the 11th of the Mo. and then Ennion 
 was prevailed with to Set his five ISTegroes at Liberty 
 by Executing for each of them severally an Instru- 
 ment of Writing Declaring their Freedom: Their 
 names and ages are as follows, viz: 
 
How the Friends Freed Their Slaves. 169 
 
 A Negroe Man Named John, about Years of Age, 
 Another Named Levi, about Years of Age, 
 
 Another Named Sampson, Aged about Years, 
 
 Another Named Samuel, Aged about Years, 
 
 Another Named Nathaniel, Aged about Years." 
 After two months the work continued: 
 "The 2d Day of the 5th Month 1776 several 
 Friends met at Middletown Monthly Meeting and 
 Concluded to meet next Day about 8 OClock at Wil- 
 liam Bidgood's in order to Visit Such Members of the 
 Falls Meeting as hold Slaves in Bondage. Where 
 according to appointment the following friends Met, 
 Viz: Thos. Stapler, William Blakey, John Nutt, 
 Thomas Wilson, William Richardson, John Merrick, 
 & James Moon; and mentioning the Cause of their 
 Visit to William & his Wife, who had one Negroe 
 Woman Named Jane Aged about 60 Years, William 
 appeared quite willing to Set her at Liberty and 
 accordingly Executed an Instrument in Writing 
 imder his hand & Seal, Declaring her to be a free 
 Woman. 
 
 " Then the same Friends went to John Brown's, 
 who has 4 Negroes, Viz: A Negroe Man named 
 Peter, Aged about 48 Years; A Mulatta Woman 
 Named Savina, Aged about 33 Years; a Girl named 
 Hannah, about 12 Years Old, and a Boy Named 
 James, about 6 Years Old; But altho' John appeared 
 in a free open Disposition, Yet did not discover any 
 
170 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 inclination to Set his JSTegroes at Liberty, therefore 
 a further Labour is thought JSTecessary. 
 
 " Then the same Triends went to Joseph Lovett's, 
 ■who appeared free and open with Friends, but did not 
 appear willing to Set or Declare his Negroes free. 
 Therefore further care to be extended; he has 3, Viz: 
 A ISTegroe Woman JSTamed Barbary, Aged about 22 
 Years & two Children, the one a Girl about 3 Years 
 Old Ifamed Silvia & the other a Mulatta E'amed 
 Dinah aged about 6 Months. 
 
 " Then William Blakey, Thomas Wilson, John 
 Merrick & James Moon went to George Brown's, 
 who has 2 Negroes, One ISTamed William, Aged about 
 66 Years, on whose account George Executed a Writ- 
 ing under his Hand, Declaring him a free Man; the 
 other a youth about 20 or near 21 Years of Age, 
 Named Tattlum, but George was not willing to de- 
 clare him free as yet, but gave friends to Expect he 
 would Do it some future time: Friends staid there 
 all Night. 
 
 " The next Morning (being the 4th of the Month) 
 James Moon, John Nutt, Thomas Wilson & William 
 Blakey Visited Sarah Growden, who has 3 Negroes, 
 Viz: An Antient Woman, Aged 60 Years or Up- 
 wards, Named Hose; a Negroe Woman, Named 
 Flora, Aged about 28 Years, & a Lad about 11 or 12 
 Years of Age, Named Mark, he being at school at the 
 same time). Sarah received the Visit kindly and 
 
Holu the Friends Freed Their Slaves. 171 
 
 informed them that Altho' She was not Disposed to 
 set her IsTegroes at Liberty While She Lived, Yet she 
 had taken Care to Make Such provision for them as 
 that they Should not be kept in Bondage or Slavery 
 after her Death. 
 
 " Then went to Joseph Milner's, who has a ISTegroe 
 
 man named Peter Aged about 49 Years, but 
 
 Joseph appeared to Stick in the Mire and it seems as 
 if it would be hard to pull him out, therefore further 
 Labour JSTecessary. 
 
 " Then Friends went to Robert Lucas's who has a 
 Girl about 22 Years of Age, ISTamed Zilpah (then at 
 school.) Eobert received Friends in a free open man- 
 ner & acknowledged the practice of making Slaves 
 of our fellow Men to be wrong and Proposed to take 
 the Matter of freeing his Negroe into more close 
 Consideration. 
 
 " Then friends went to Elizabeth Warder's, who 
 had 12 Negroes, Viz: A JSTegroe Woman named 
 Hager Aged near 69 Years; Another named Dinah, 
 Aged near 41 Years; a Negroe Man named Virgil, 
 near 36 years of Age; a Negroe Woman ISTamed Han- 
 nah, near 20 Years of Age; Two ISTegroe Women, 
 Viz: Fanny & Euth, Near 16 Years of Age; a Ne- 
 groe Girl named Hager, Aged about 13 Years; An- 
 other Girl Named Amy, about 10 Years of Age; A 
 Negroe Lad named Aaron, between 9 and 10 Years 
 of Age; A Negroe Girl Named Mary about 3 Years 
 
172 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 Old; Another JSTamed Sarah near a Year Old; An- 
 other Named N'ancy near a year old. Elizabeth 
 appeared to take the Visit kindly & seemed very 
 desirous of Friends' Advice respecting her IsTegroes; 
 As her case and the Circumstances attending it ap- 
 peared somewhat Difficult, Friends gave her some 
 Advice and left the matter to her further Considera- 
 tion." 
 
 The case of Elizabeth Warder will show how per- 
 sistently the Friends kept at the task. We will 
 follow it through to its conclusion. What were the 
 exact nature of the difficulties we cannot tell, but 
 on the 20th of Eighth month, 1T76, the Committee 
 again saw her. " She confessed a considerable un- 
 easiness and difficulty in respect to her negroes, and 
 seemed to be desirous of Friends' advice therein." 
 They urged her at least to give the children an edu- 
 cation. " She appeared to take Friends' visit kindly." 
 
 Again on the 28th of First month, 1777, " Eliza- 
 beth expressed a considerable difficulty and uneasi- 
 ness in regard to the circumstances and conduct of 
 her negroes, and was prevailed with to set one of 
 them (an antient woman) at liberty, but could not be 
 prevailed upon to do anything further with regard to 
 the rest." 
 
 On the eighth day of the Eleventh month, 1777, 
 the Committee gave Elizabeth further advice, when 
 she set free two women, and two or three of their 
 
How the Friends Freed Their Slaves. 173 
 
 children. On the eighth day of the Eighth month, 
 1778, there was another " full opportunity." " But 
 Elizabeth appeared altogether to decline giving any 
 more of her negroes their freedom and liberty; alleg- 
 ing that those two young women she had freed and set 
 at liberty did not conduct well as they ought to do." 
 Two months later " it seemed difficult for her to pro- 
 ceed any further at present in setting her negroes at 
 liberty from bondage," and the matter drifted along 
 till 1780, when another unsuccessful effort was made 
 to induce her to free her remaining six slaves. 
 Finally, on the 15th day of Eirst month, 1781, she 
 freed five of them, and agreed to give the sixth, an 
 old slave woman, " a piece of good silk to make a 
 bonnet which we judged was more than sufficient 
 wages for that time." A few months later she freed 
 the woman. 
 
 This case is a sample of the continuous labor ex- 
 pended, which nearly always proved successful. A 
 very few, perhaps not more than three or four in the 
 whole Quarterly Meeting, held out and were dis- 
 owned. One who had refused to accept the peren- 
 nial advice is left in this way: " All that could be said 
 could not prevail upon her to manumit. She ap- 
 peared determined to keep them under her command 
 while she lived, but signified she should leave them 
 to have their liberty after her decease, intimating 
 that she should leave Friends at liberty to proceed 
 
174 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 as they thought best." This liberty they proceeded 
 to take. " Her case is imder the care of Falls 
 Monthly Meeting, and a testimony is likely to go 
 against her, which (written later) was afterwards 
 issued by said Monthly Meeting, and she thereby dis- 
 united in religiotis fellowship in society with Friends, 
 as her persisting in and endeavoring to justify her 
 conduct justly deserved." 
 
 These are only a . few of the many cases which 
 James Moon tells about, and he adds, in summing up 
 this part of the labor, " Thus far I have pursued this 
 subject until I don't know of any Negro being kept 
 in a state of bondage or slavery for term of life by 
 any member of the Falls Monthly Meeting, except a 
 very few instances where the mistresses are in mem- 
 bership and the masters not." 
 
 But the work of the committee was not done when 
 the blacks were freed. Their welfare was to be 
 inquired into, so a series of visits to their houses fol- 
 lowed. One record may suffice as a sample of many : 
 " Went to Cuffy Kelsey and visited him and his fam- 
 ily, himself being about 50 years of age; his wife 
 Margaret, almost 42 years of age; a daughter be- 
 tween 8 and 9 years old, and a sucking child; they 
 appear to have things pretty well about them and 
 that they may do pretty well with care and industry." 
 Eeligious services in the homes accompanied these 
 inquiries into physical conditions. 
 
How the Friends Freed Their Slaves. 1Y5 
 
 One other service yet remained, — to see that these 
 men and women, who had been working for their 
 masters all their lives, or who had been sold and the 
 price retained, should have at least partial compensa- 
 tion for past services. They were not to be thrust 
 into freedom without old debts being liquidated. The 
 willingness of these persistent slaveholders to com- 
 ply is the best proof of the effectiveness and purity 
 of motive of the labors of the committee. Here is one 
 of several successful efforts : 
 
 "The 10th of the 12th Month, 1781; After Con- 
 clusion of the Meeting for Negroes, Thomas Watson, 
 James Moon, & Samuel Smith went to Bristol, and 
 had a Seasonable opportunity that Evening with 
 Phineas Buckley & his wife Mary, Respecting the 
 Case of Cuff Douglas, a Negroe Man, who Divers 
 years back purchased his wife Dido of Ennion Wil- 
 liams paying said Williams a Considerable Sum of 
 Mony for his wife & their three Children's freedom; 
 And since the Decease of Said Ennion Williams, the 
 Said Phineas Buckley inherits the sd. Ennion's Es- 
 tate; this matter was therefore recommended to the 
 Solid & Disinterested Consideration of Said Phineas 
 Buckley & his wife. Whether in Equity and Justice 
 there was not Something Justly Due to the Said 
 IvTegroe Man from the Estate of the Said Ennion Wil- 
 liams; And, as he the Said Buckley Inherits the Said 
 Estate, Whether upon a Due and Serious Considera- 
 
176 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 tion of the Circumstances of the Case, there was not 
 in Justice Something Due from him to the said Cuff 
 Douglas, which, after being closely recommended 
 to their Consideration that Evening, and mentioned 
 again to them next Morning, when Thomas Stapler 
 was also present, they appeared to take friends' Visit 
 in a friendly manner. And to have the matter with 
 some weight on their minds, and Phineas Signified 
 that he had for Some time had thoughts of doing 
 Some thing for Said Cuff, if the circumstances of his 
 Affairs was Such, and a way opened for him So to 
 Do; And he expressed to friends, that he Still Con- 
 tinued in the Same mind; upon which friends left the 
 matter to his further Solid Consideration. 
 
 " On the 6th of the 12th Month, 1783, James 
 Moon, John Simpson, William Blakey & Samuel 
 Smith went to Bristol, And took another opportunity 
 with Phineas Buckley & Mary his wife, in Respect of 
 their making Some Restitution to the aforesaid Cuff 
 Douglas, an Aged Negroe Man; who upon their being 
 treated with on this matter. Appeared to take friends' 
 advice in a good Disposition, and Signified that they 
 had had that matter under their consideration, and 
 proposed to give or pay him Something in order to 
 enable him to get some ISTecessarys against the Ap- 
 proaching Winter. 
 
 " The 21st of the 2nd Month, 1784, Report was 
 made by the Select Committee appointed to have the 
 
How the Friends Freed Their Slaves. 1Y7 
 
 Care of Such Cases as relates to making restitution 
 among our own Number, that they had Visited a 
 friend, (Phineas Buckley) and found him in a good 
 disposition; and he being present Signified that he had 
 done Something this Winter towards the Relief of a 
 Certain aged Wegroe Man (the aforesaid Cuff Doug- 
 las) by way of Restitution. 
 
 " The 19th of the 2d Month, 1785. Report was 
 made by one of the aforesaid committee that the Case 
 in Bristol (to wit, the Case of Phineas Buckley) was 
 Settled to a good Degree of Satisfaction, he having 
 given his obligation to pay a Considerable Sum of 
 money to a friend in trust, and for the use and Bene- 
 fit of the Said Negroe Man, namely Cuff Douglas, and 
 the Support of his family." 
 
 In all, some seventy negroes were freed in this 
 Quarterly Meeting and well started in life. If the 
 same proportion existed elsewhere, possibly some 700 
 to 1,000 slaves were liberated in this final clearing up 
 process in the Yearly Meeting. That much work of 
 the same kind had been previously done is shown by 
 the diary of Isaac Jackson, who in 1759 was on a 
 similar committee in another Quarterly Meetings 
 where he estimated that 1,100 slaves were held by 
 members of the Society of Friends. 
 
 This process, with its ramifications extending into 
 the community, was creating a wholesome sentiment 
 against the system. It is not, therefore, a matter of 
 
178 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 surprise that Pennsylvania led in the passage of aboli- 
 tion laws. In 1Y80 a bill passed the legislature, mak- 
 ing all slaves bom after that date free at tvsrenty-one. 
 The author was George Bryan, an active member of 
 the regime which came into power by the extinction 
 of Quaker political influence at the outbreak of the 
 Revolutionary War. " Our bill," he writes Samuel 
 Adams, " astonishes and pleases the Quakers. They 
 looked for no such benevolent issue of our new gov- 
 ernment exercised by Presbyterians." Thus it hap- 
 pened that the long contest waged for almost one 
 hundred years from the time that Pastorius and his 
 friends petitioned the Yearly Meeting in 1688, 
 wrought out its beneficent results under a political 
 party to which the Friends were utterly opposed. 
 The sentiment had been created in the common- 
 wealth and could not be resisted. It would have 
 seemed historic justice if the lifelong advocates of 
 the righteous reform could have presided at its tri- 
 umph. But the fact that it did triumph was enough 
 satisfaction for them. The self-effacement always in 
 evidence in their political connections enabled them 
 to rejoice most heartily with the freed black men, 
 even though the last act of the drama was decreed by 
 their theological and political antipodes, the Scotch- 
 Irish Presbyterians of Western Pennsylvania. 
 
THE FRIENDS' MEETIITG.* 
 
 If any excuse is needed for addressing such an 
 audience as this on a subject so familiar as the one 
 on which I am to speak, it may be found partly in 
 the fact that new generations are constantly arriving 
 at years of intellectual maturity, and hence the pre- 
 sentation must be continually renewed; and partly 
 in the fact that this revolutionary age has a 
 tendency to cause us to prove all things over and 
 over. Many of our dearest and most tenaciously- 
 held beliefs have been questioned by the remorseless 
 progress of modern thought, and every one with any 
 openness of miad has found it necessary to examine 
 and often to recast his whole scheme of ethics and 
 theology. 
 
 I do not hold that the beliefs of the early Friends 
 should be held too sacred to be submitted to the same 
 searching test. They were men who themselves came 
 boldly out from the cherished beliefs of their age, and 
 with marked originality laid down a program for 
 themselves which was in itself revolutionary. I ap- 
 prehend they would have been the last to fetter 
 thought and freedom, still less to stifle that fountain 
 of truth from which they drew, which, according to 
 
 * This and the following paper were given to various au- 
 diences in and around Philadelphia in 1904 and 1905. 
 
180 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 their most cherished doctrine, is new to every age and 
 every person. 
 
 " Worshipers of light ancestral 
 Make our present light a crime," 
 
 and the liberty they themselves cherished they in- 
 tended to pass on uadimmed, even by adherence to 
 their own prepossessions, to us their children. In this 
 age of querying and analysis we may, therefore, very 
 properly submit to our laboratory methods the posi- 
 tions of Fox and Barclay. It will be found that they 
 looked at things in many respects differently from 
 ourselves, and that we have practically cast aside, or 
 modified, certain positions, in the fuller light of the 
 two and a half centuries following. 
 
 Is this the case all around? Must we discard 
 George Fox Quakerism in toto, or in fundamental 
 priaciples, for a newer and a better philosophy of re- 
 ligion, to adapt it to expandiug thought and new 
 science, to the developments of biology and psychol- 
 ogy and criticism of the twentieth century? 
 
 In reply to this I vsdll quote from Professor James, 
 of Harvard, a modern of the moderns, utterly unpre- 
 judiced in favor of our Society, but fearless in mat- 
 ters of investigation. In his " Varieties of Religious 
 Experience," published within a year (the substance 
 of the Gifford lectures given at Edinburgh the pre- 
 vious winter), he says: " The Quaker religion which 
 
The Friends' Meeting. 181 
 
 he (George Fox) founded is something which it is 
 impossible to overpraise. In a day of shams, it was 
 a religion of veracity, rooted in spiritual inwardness, 
 and a return to something more like the original gos- 
 pel truth than men had ever known in England. So 
 far as our Christian sects to-day are evolving into 
 liberality, they are simply reverting in essence to 
 the position Avhich Fox and the early Quakers so long 
 ago assumed. No one can pretend for a moment that, 
 in point of spiritual sagacity and capacity, Fox's mind 
 was unsound. Every one who confronted him per- 
 sonally, from Oliver Cromwell dovm to county mag- 
 istrates and jailers, seems to have acknowledged his 
 superior power." 
 
 What would be your answer if you were asked 
 about the particular phase of Quaker doctrine to 
 which he refers when he says that as the Christian 
 sects have developed in liberality they have ap- 
 proached the positions held by George Fox ? Does he 
 refer to moral views or theological, and if so which 
 ones ? or to the peculiarities of dress and language, or 
 to their attitude towards government, or to the type 
 of Christian character developed? 
 
 I want briefly to make an attempt to answer this 
 question to-night, to convince us that there are cer- 
 tain strongholds of Quakerism, to use Caroline 
 Stephen's expression, to which we may trust even in 
 this overturning age to justify the strong words of 
 
182 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 Professor James. The most characteristic thing about 
 us is the Friends' Meeting. He who approves of this, 
 whatever other views he may have, is very largely a 
 Friend. It has always been so. Masson, the author 
 of the " Life and Times of John Milton," which, as 
 you know, were also the times of George Fox and his 
 friends, gives an interesting description of the con- 
 duct of Friends during the persecutions that arose 
 about the Conventicle Act. This act prohibited 
 more than five people to meet together for worship, 
 except according to the forms of the established 
 church. He says that the other Nonconformist sects 
 evaded it by professing to be meeting for social pur- 
 poses, and had jugs of beer on the tables, or went off 
 into some secret place. But the Friends kept on with 
 their meetings openly. When their houses were torn 
 down, they met in the rubbish. Any other meeting 
 could be broken up by abstracting some of the ma- 
 chinery — the altar, or the surplice, or the candles, or, 
 at the most, the minister; but a Friends' meeting 
 could be stopped only by imprisoning every individual 
 member. They needed no machinery. They went 
 on without the minister. If some were taken away, 
 the balance held the meeting; and though being cov- 
 ered with sand and reviled with epithets must have 
 been rather distracting, they mused on immovably in 
 spite of them. 
 
 This, I think, indicates the theory of the Friends' 
 
The Friends' Meeting. 183 
 
 meeting. It may be held anywhere or at any time. 
 ISTo one person is necessary. Any number of people, 
 of any grade of life, if in the right spirit, may hold it. 
 Its primary object is not to receive instruction by ser- 
 mon or song or prayer. Each member must be a liv- 
 ing, active member, and not passively a recipient of 
 valuable truths from some other member or minister. 
 Every writer of consequence places the doctrine of 
 direct divine communion as the basis of Quaker the- 
 ology, — " the root," as William Penn expressed it, 
 " of the goodly tree of doctrine that springs from 
 it." It is very satisfactory as a philosophical basis 
 of doctrine, for it allows the accretions of modern 
 thought a convenient and satisfactory place in a rea- 
 sonable scheme of faith and conduct. One can in 
 some way connect logically every important belief or 
 rule of conduct with it. JEvery soul is capable of 
 direct contact with God, and may be taught of Him. 
 Hence this is more than a satisfactory basis of a phil- 
 osophy of religion. It is a practical guide to life. 
 Just where is its province is often difficult to deter- 
 mine. Hence there arise two dangers, one in either 
 extreme. One places the emphasis on the human rea- 
 son and judgment, and ignores Divine guidance ex- 
 cept as an unconscious factor. The other consigns 
 human wisdom to oblivion, and places all dependence 
 in all matters on supernatural guidance. The one is 
 the error of the non-Friend, the other of the Friend. 
 
184 Quaherism and Politics. 
 
 The one omits the most potent factor in the develop- 
 ment of the world, the other neglects the God-given 
 powers of the human intellect, and shirks problems 
 quite within his own abihty to work out. 
 
 In the Gospels you find very little in the way of 
 constructive theology, and very little in the way of 
 direct attack upon existing evil and immorality. Yet 
 this was the most corrupt age of Koman dominion. 
 Immoral practices pervaded society, the State, and 
 religion; slavery, cruelty, debauchery were never 
 more prevalent. Does it not seem strange that 
 Jesus Christ does not specifically condemn them? 
 or, for instance, that Paul, in sending the run- 
 away slave Onesimus back to his owner, does not 
 attack the institution of slavery? Not if we 
 understand it aright. Christ might have entered 
 upon a crusade against existing ills, but His mis- 
 sion extended into the future. At the crucifixion 
 the tangible effect of His life was only a very few 
 disciples. He apparently made very little impression 
 on the world. Josephus, who within fifty years after- 
 v/ard wrote a history of the Jews of his time, leaves 
 Him out, or makes only a doubtful reference to Him, 
 though he mentions John the Baptist. But these few 
 disciples possessed a new Spirit, and that new Spirit 
 began to revolutionize the world. It extended its 
 influence from man to man. Gross evils began to 
 fall, not so much because they were attacked, as 
 
The Friends' Meeting. 185 
 
 because the people were lifted to a plane above them 
 and they disappeared. Gladiatorial shows in time 
 passed away; the worst evils of slavery were miti- 
 gated, and provisions for the sick and aged began to 
 arise, — ^institutions before unknown. The Spirit 
 gradually conquered the worst vices of the Roman 
 world, and when the barbarian came down, it began 
 over again with him. It is unnecessary to follow its 
 triumphant career. The world has been growing bet- 
 ter contiaually, and all because the Spirit of Chris- 
 tianity has been doing its work through faithful men 
 and women. 
 
 ISTow this Spirit of history is none other than the 
 Holy Spirit of God, to which George Fox gave its 
 rightful place as the most important agent in the 
 world. He called it the Seed, Christ within, the In- 
 ward Light, and so on. But it was none other than 
 the influence by which the world had been moved 
 God-ward ever since the day of Pentecost. Friends 
 have not been alone in recognizing the existence of 
 the Holy Spirit in the world. The Biblical references 
 to it are too numerous and too plain, and its work in 
 many cases too evident, for Christians to doubt its 
 existence. 
 
 What, then, is our position ? It seems to me some- 
 thing like this: Other denominations have gone on 
 with their Christian work as best they could, trusting 
 that this work would be blessed by the Spirit. 
 
186 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 Friends liave sought to understand tlie manner of its 
 working, and have refused to enter upon many forms 
 of serious spiritual endeavor without its conscious and 
 manifest guidance. The others have done the best 
 they could with their human powers, and have 
 trusted in many cases most justifiably, that God 
 would sanction their good intentions and honest effort 
 by His blessing. Eriends have said, or should have 
 said, if logical, " In certain ways the intellectual 
 and moral powers of the man should be used to their 
 full. But in the direct religious functions of wor- 
 ship and ministry, which involve contact with the 
 Divine Soul HimseK, we will await the influence of 
 that soul, lay ourselves open to its subtle suggestions 
 and magnetisms, and what it commands, that will we 
 do, and that only. It shall be our pillar of cloud and 
 fire, and where it stops there will we pitch our tents ; 
 when it moves, then will we follow." 
 
 I have no criticism to make of other forms of Chris- 
 tian service. I have no testimony against them. 
 They, because of the number and zeal of their fol- 
 lowers, are doing more to move on the world than our- 
 selves. But I cannot but think that our effort to take 
 the Holy Spirit into account, and to make practical 
 adaptation to the laws of its working, to make our 
 arrangements as if it were really an acting factor in 
 advance of action, is the truest, the highest, and the 
 best basis of religious work, to which we must be 
 faithful, by standing by it fully and logically against 
 
The Friends' Meeting. 187 
 
 the temptations of expediency. We believe it does 
 move and guide those who are in a condition to be 
 moved and guided, and that this condition is quietness 
 before its operations, a vpaiting and teachable and 
 vsdlling spirit. 
 
 But is this conscious teaching a reality ? Is not the 
 other form of religious service really the true Chris- 
 tian method? 
 
 I have said that the moral development of the 
 "world siace the Christian era is based on the spread 
 of the Christ Spirit in human hearts, and then the 
 outworking of this Spirit in effort. The Spirit has 
 worked through all obedient Christians. In the case 
 of Friends I think we may claim it has worked more 
 effectively and more early in the history of many 
 moral reforms. The slavery question is often cited. 
 Here Friends were decades ahead of other denomina- 
 tions. I believe the same is true of war. It is equally 
 true of a number of other forms which I shall not 
 now mention.* 
 
 How do you explain this? Kot on the basis of 
 greater intelligence and ability to form a better ethi- 
 cal philosophy; not as a logical outcome of any other 
 doctrine held by them, so far as I know; not because 
 they were more earnest in Christian work than many 
 others who held different views; but because, as it 
 seems to me, when Friends got together in their 
 religious meetings in silence and attentiveness, the 
 
 * See the first chapter in this book. 
 
188 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 Holy Spirit revealed to them the truth of the matter; 
 because they did not argue the rightness of a thing 
 from its immediate results; because, as Whittier 
 says, 
 
 " They felt that wrong with wrong partakes, 
 
 That nothing stands alone 
 That whoso gives the motive makes 
 
 His brother's sin his own. 
 And pausing not for doubtful choice 
 
 Of evils great and small, 
 They listened to the Inward Voice 
 
 That turned away from all." 
 
 This verse is an epitome of the Friend's moral phil- 
 osophy. All wrong is one. Do any wrong thing, and 
 it strengthens evil all around. Do a right thing, and 
 it cuts off the allies and resources of evil. Moreover, 
 every time you do anything of neutral quality, 
 knowing its probable evil influence, you are account- 
 able. You make your brother's sin your own. 
 It is not a question of choosing the less of two 
 evils. If you base right and wrong on results 
 only, adopting utilitarian ideas, you are hope- 
 lessly muddled. Wrong ceases to be anything 
 definite. If a man says, " I think this will do 
 good," he becomes his own standard, and in his short- 
 sighted wisdom he grievously, if innocently, errs. 
 Yet this is the prevailing philosophy of the day. 
 " There are worse things than war," say its advocates, 
 and so the wickedness of war is sanctioned. While 
 not denying the statement, the Quaker cannot admit 
 
The Friends' Meeting. 189 
 
 that it is a justification. " If I do not kill this worth- 
 less man, he will destroy my valuable life," says the 
 man attacked by a highwayman; " I choose the lesser 
 evil," — and so he has murder to answer for. As a 
 matter of fact, you do not have to commit evil; you 
 can suffer, you can die, but you never have to load 
 your conscience with a crime. As Whittier says, 
 
 you may 
 
 " Pausing not for doubtful choice 
 Of evils great or small," 
 
 " Listen to the Inward Voice 
 That turns away from all." 
 
 And that is just what Friends did in the matter of 
 slavery, lotteries, and other things; and they did it 
 just because the Inward Voice was a reality. ISTot 
 only so, but its revelations proved themselves to be 
 of the greatest utiKty in the course of time. 
 
 Another subject which has proved of advantage to 
 us is the Friends' attitude toward the Bible. This 
 has been always the crucial object of attack of non- 
 Christians. A century ago geology seemed like a 
 dangerous enemy. But geology carried its points, 
 and the Bible was not hurt. Then came on biology 
 and evolution, with kindred results, and now we are in 
 the throes of the agitation of that which is unfortun- 
 ately called Higher Criticism. That too will prob- 
 ably establish many of its contentions, and still 
 the Bible will stand as strong as ever. Of all 
 
190 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 other bodies, Friends have had the least cause to fear 
 these attacks, and the wisest of them have been the 
 earliest to accept the teaching. Thomas Story, one 
 of the first men of early Pennsylvania, a friend of 
 Penn and a minister of great power, read in the rocks 
 of Scarborough the refutation of the six-day theory 
 of creation, nearly a century before the geologists. 
 All down the line the Quaker spiritual attitude has 
 placed us on a vantage ground. 
 
 This was due partly to the objection they fre- 
 quently urged to calling the Bible the " Word of 
 God." They took the broader conception that the 
 Word, as used in the New Testament, meant any 
 message of God. " The word was made flesh " re- 
 ferred to Christ. " The word was living and acting " 
 referred to the Spirit. The conception which the 
 ordinary person receives from the expression Word 
 of God is that the Bible was a dictated revelation by 
 God himself; hence a passage of Deuteronomy is of 
 as universal and literal application as one in John, 
 and the manifest discrepancies between the Old and 
 'Sew Testaments are put aside as transcending human 
 ability to determine. 
 
 We have this carried to an extreme in the opinions 
 of John Jasper, a colored clergyman who a few years 
 ago proved impossible the roundness of the earth. 
 The Bible speaks of the four corners of the earth, he 
 says, and triumphantly adds, " How can a round 
 
The Friends' Meeting. 191 
 
 thing have four corners ? " Now it is not, he says, 
 any fallible man who makes this statement, but God 
 Almighty himself, and therefore it is to be accepted 
 as against all the dictates of common sense and ordi- 
 nary science. 
 
 While this is an extreme case, it is the argument 
 — sometimes veiled — of hundreds of Bible expositors, 
 who take the obvious and easy meaning of separate 
 texts and draw rules of theology and conduct from 
 them. But Friends not only objected to the expres- 
 sion, they objected to taking things just as they 
 seemed, and demanding a belief in literal infallibility. 
 Eobert Barclay tells of an uneducated Quaker minis- 
 ter of his day who boldly announced by the Spirit that 
 a certain text was not properly in the Bible, which by 
 a linguistic examination afterwards proved to be true. 
 The need of spiritual illumination, and the weakness 
 of merely intellectual conceptions, to bring home the 
 real meaning and apphcation of Bible readings, has 
 always been urged. So the teaching of the Spirit 
 became the highest authority, and the Bible was 
 looked upon as a Book divinely inspired in its ulti- 
 mate content, but written at various times and for 
 various purposes, and understood by us as our minds 
 were illumined to appropriate its deeper and under- 
 lying truths. This spiritual revelation of fundamental 
 truth can never be touched by science and criticism, 
 which may do their valuable work, and whose revela- 
 
192 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 tions we may accept, not hastily, but whenever they 
 become firmly established. 
 
 But the best evidence of the reality of spiritual 
 guidance is the testimony and experience of two cen- 
 turies of devout intelligent men, unbaptized by water, 
 non-participants in the bread and wine of the Eu- 
 charist, but believing and testifying by word and life 
 to the fact that they have been baptized really by a 
 Spirit which acts upon their life, and that they are in 
 the habit of a daily communion which purifies their 
 thoughts and is a practical guide to conduct. The 
 man born blind cannot get a sense of color. He must 
 receive such imperfect conception as he can second- 
 hand, from the testimony of others. So the man spir- 
 itually blind through his own disobedience, may not 
 beheve and cannot conceive the sight of Divine things 
 open to him in contact with a source of light denied 
 to him. But he ought to be vsdlling to accept the tes- 
 timony of the multitudes of those who speak of what 
 they do know. The writings of Friends are full of 
 information on this point, — of ministers who saw 
 clearly into the condition of those unknown to them, 
 who against ordinary common-sense went to places 
 because of an inward impulse, which proved right; of 
 co-operation between two distant and stranger ser- 
 vants, wonderfully brought together in work to 
 accomplish a certain point; and a host of others. I 
 would not deny that some, perhaps many, of these 
 
The Friends' Meeting. 193 
 
 were coincidences, or accidents, or imaginations, or 
 suggestions of others, mistaken for revelations. But 
 you may eliminate all these, and yet you have a body 
 of evidence that seems to me unshakable in favor of 
 the fact that thoSe who observe the conditions of 
 Divine revelation in willingness and humility do 
 receive intimations of truth denied to others. 
 
 What then can be more logical or reasonable than 
 a Friends' meeting ? If the Holy Spirit does speak to 
 men, is not that Spirit, the Spirit which has wrought 
 all the great moral and religious progress of history, 
 the principal factor in worship ? Should we not meet 
 together, not with our minds full of other things, not 
 to hear others' views of what God may think, but by 
 power of will putting aside all these things, and open- 
 ing our hearts to all the suggestions and influences of 
 the Spirit addressed directly to us, and fitted, as no 
 man can fit them, to our special conditions? There 
 is a striking difference in the way in which a typical 
 Friend and another approaches such a meeting. The 
 Friend is solemnized by the responsibility that opens 
 before him. ISTo one can relieve him of it. He has 
 his own positive duty before him. The other man, in 
 many cases, goes to hear a sermon or the music, with 
 an honest hope that he may be benefited. The one 
 meeting is a meeting of positive worshipers; in many 
 cases the other is a meeting of interested listeners; 
 the one is individually active, the other passive; the 
 
194 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 one can go on without any part of its membersliip or 
 machinery, the other is lost without a leader. If, 
 when all have come together in the spirit of devotion, 
 there are words which need to be said, any one may 
 say them as the impression is laid upon him. Every 
 one is in the hands of that omniscient Being who 
 knows the exact needs of each. This, it seems to me, 
 is the most beautiful and the highest form of wor- 
 ship, — a form which, while indulging in no criticism 
 on others, is one for which we ought to be thankful 
 that we have inherited from our past history. 
 
 Such is the theory, but it has several weaknesses 
 in practice, — some the accumulations of the ages, 
 due to limitations on the Spirit's freedom, some inci- 
 dent to the weakness of human nature, and to the 
 fact that we are not all worshipful Christians. 
 
 One of the dilBcult things that Friends have con- 
 tended with is the minister's relation to education. 
 George Fox said that a university education was not 
 essentia.! to a minister; but many of his followers of 
 succeeding generations have developed the view that 
 it was not desirable, — a very different proposition. It 
 has been held that " human learning," as it is some- 
 times rather opprobriously called, is an actual bar to 
 the ministry. May we never slight a true minister 
 because he is uneducated. We know too well the 
 power and usefulness of many untrained in the 
 schools to deny any claims made for them. Here we 
 
The Friends' Meeting. 195 
 
 may always differ from those bodies which place edu- 
 cation as an essential thing, and hence make college 
 and seminary degrees a necessity. But the objection 
 usually urged against educated ministers is that they 
 are too full of human interests and conceits, that they 
 are not teachable, and hence not responsive to the 
 Spirit call. Personally I have not noticed this. 
 Every one has his own conceits and iaterests and 
 thoughts, the ignorant man no less than the educated, 
 the difference being that in his case they are illogical 
 and baseless. While there is a place for his ministry, 
 there is also a place for the Friend of better oppor- 
 tunities and larger mental powers. This Friends have 
 often failed to provide. The first generation of 
 Friends contained many of them, — educated before 
 they joined; but neither in England nor here in Penn- 
 sylvania, where the whole thing was in their hands, 
 was there made any provision for their continuance. 
 They lacked the incentive which founded Yale and 
 Harvard and Princeton, the absolute necessity for an 
 educated ministry. Had the Penn Charter School 
 developed into a Quaker college, which it probably 
 would have done had men like Penn and Lloyd and 
 Logan been succeeded by others as well educated and 
 broad-minded, giving it a half-century start on the 
 institution which afterwards became the University 
 of Pennsylvania, the whole history of Pennsylvania 
 
196 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 and of Quakerism might have been differently 
 written. After-educated men, ministers and others, 
 — ^for in early times the educated men were nearly 
 all ministers, — ^would have moulded Quaker thought 
 on liberal lines, and commended it to others; the 
 infusion of our principles into government would 
 have been more powerful, and unfortunate separa- 
 tions might have been prevented. 
 
 However, I do not want to indulge in historical 
 speculation, though it is very enticing. I only want 
 to urge that any remnants still existing of the idea 
 that higher education is a danger to our ministry or 
 our spirituality should be destroyed, — while always 
 guarding with jealous care the principle that upon 
 whomsoever the fiery tongue of Pentecost descends, 
 of whatever stage of society or education he may be, 
 should not be denied equal recognition from the 
 church. 
 
 I suppose inspiration is usually an inspiration of 
 ideas. Such at least is the notion I gather from read- 
 ing journals and talking to ministers of the present 
 day. A thought or a subject is given, and around 
 this the man gathers such modes of expression and 
 illustrations and arguments as come readily to his 
 intellect. There is the union of the divine and human 
 element in every true sermon. True, there are 
 accounts of cases where the man was lifted upon his 
 feet and words were given to him, but these are prob- 
 
The Friends' Meeting. 197 
 
 ably rare. The process of dictation is, I apprehend, 
 unusual. The man uses such material as his mental 
 powers have accumulated to amplify the divinely- 
 given thought or succession of thoughts. He is, there- 
 fore, liable to err. When the Biblical writer wanted 
 to embrace the whole world, he expressed it by refer- 
 ring to the four corners of the earth. Very likely he 
 thought the earth was square, — at all events he used, 
 I suppose, a common expression of the idea; and the 
 fact that modem science showed that the earth has 
 no corners would not invalidate his authority. I^or 
 would it in the case of the modem Friend who quoted 
 Shakespeare, attributing the words to the Bible, or 
 who referred to the '' holy man of old," when he was 
 quoting, unknown to himseK, Satan in the book of 
 Job. 
 
 The man who confines his reading to the Bible will 
 use only biblical illustrations; he who reads only 
 Friends' writings will get their manner of thought 
 and expression; the minister who is also a scientific 
 man will clothe his thoughts in scientific language, 
 and use scientific illustrations and accurate logic; 
 while the man who is not anything in particular will 
 wander along from one thought to another as they 
 come into his miad, whether from a divine source 
 or from his own suggestions. 
 
 Fifty years ago, when every child at Westtown 
 read Cowper's poems till he had committed them to 
 
198 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 memory, it was the most natural thing in the world 
 to find them reproduced in sermons. And now, when 
 men are studying biblical commentaries and litera- 
 ture, it may be assumed that they will abound in 
 First-day meetings. All of this, I think, we must 
 admit, and must be hospitable to all, judging of a 
 man's gift not by his illustrations or manner or 
 appearance, but by the spiritual judgment at the com- 
 mand of every sincere Christian. ISTor is it right to 
 argue a man's unbaptized condition if he does not 
 happen to appeal to us at the time. His message may 
 be for others, or it may be bread cast upon the waters. 
 
 The present is a time when it seems to me espe- 
 cially important that this most vital and character- 
 istic of Friendly principles, the immediate teaching 
 of the Spirit, should be especially insisted on as typi- 
 fied in our meetings for worship. For there seem to 
 be signs of greater life and activity, spiritual and 
 intellectual, than have sometimes existed. Such 
 times may be times of the greatest blessing or the 
 greatest danger. If we look only at the fearful side 
 and obstruct everything that has life on account of 
 possible danger, we shut off a God-given opportunity, 
 as we have done many a time before, and hence create 
 the very danger we wish to avoid, the danger of the 
 final elimination of this Society as a body to bear up 
 the principles of truth. 
 
 If we co-operate with it, encourage it and direct it. 
 
The Friends' Meeting. 199 
 
 it becomes the beginning of a new day of blessing for 
 las. But it is important tbat at sucli times, of all 
 others, that which is essential and fundamental in 
 Quakerism should be plainly brought to the front. 
 In our plans of church activity there is a demand for 
 more religious expression than we have had in the 
 past, and so we have First-day schools, and tea-meet- 
 ings, and meetings for religious conference, where we 
 do not deem it essential that each one should wait 
 for a divine impulse before he speaks. If this idea 
 spreads into our meetings for worship, then we have 
 lost our best estate. It seems to me a very right and 
 important thing in its place, but we must so instruct 
 and guard our membership that the old meeting will 
 commend itself to them, and they will ask no change. 
 There may be few who would urge pre-arranged 
 meetings as to song, sermon, or other service, or 
 a ministry intellectual vnthout being spiritual. But 
 the demand may come, here as elsewhere, and the 
 wise plan is not to pursue the suicidal policy 
 of cutting off all life except it be according to 
 certain traditional appearances, but to cherish life 
 as above all things the one thing needful, and 
 carefully show the superiority of our way of exercis- 
 ing it in meetings for worship. We cannot narrow 
 the operations of the Spirit except to our own loss. 
 We cannot assume that its teachings to our ances- 
 tors in every detail will be repeated, that all light was 
 
200 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 given to them and nothing new to us; but we must 
 open our minds and hearts to the needs of the present 
 
 The best theoTy of a meeting is useless without 
 faithfulness. Every one of us is a minister, or may 
 be. Many undoubtedly ought to be who have 
 thwarted the purposes of their divine Teacher. They 
 have disobeyed the early calls to service, to their own 
 and the meeting's loss. It is not an easy thing 
 to speak in a Friends' meeting, and there is not 
 much danger that it will be too common, or too 
 hghtly undertaken. An impulse, a feeling to say 
 something, is probably from the right source, and 
 it may safely be so understood. It is a quiet 
 constraint and not a miraculous call that we are 
 to look for. Here again let Whittier interpret for us: 
 
 "O, then if gleams of truth and light 
 
 Flash o'er the waiting mind, 
 Unfolding to thy mental sight 
 
 The wants of human kind; 
 If, brooding over human grief. 
 
 The earnest wish is known 
 To soothe and gladden with relief 
 
 An anguish not thine own ; 
 
 " Though heralded with naught of fear, 
 
 Or outward sign or show; 
 Though only to the inward ear 
 
 It whispers soft and low; 
 Though dropping as the manna fell, 
 
 Unseen, yet from above, 
 Noiseless as dew-fall, heed it well, — 
 
 Thy Father's call of love! 
 
The Friends' Meeting. 201 
 
 If every one were faithful, there would be many 
 speaking, and there would be no loss to the dignity 
 and solemnity of the meeting. We may well be on 
 our guard against unauthorized sermons which hurt 
 the quiet of a living meeting, but the brief, honest 
 effort of a young person is the most solemnizing thing 
 that I know, and I have no doubt we ought to have 
 much more of it than we do ia all our meetings. 
 
 In the possession of these great principles, some of 
 which I think must be included in the commendation 
 of Professor James, I think we may take an optimis- 
 tic view of the future. The Spirit which has already 
 triumphed over so much of evil will not now cease to 
 work. The body which most clearly and prac- 
 tically and faithfully recognizes it and makes pro- 
 vision for it will go on to triumph. It may be that on 
 account of our narrowness and unfaithfulness we 
 shall die, while the principle we profess succeeds. But 
 I hardly think so. There is enough left to build on. It 
 may be that the tide has already turned. At any rate 
 it is great encouragement to feel sure of firm ground 
 under our feet, and that the Spirit which built up our 
 Society may still be working for us. 
 
THE BASIS OF QUAKER MORALITY. 
 
 I have been accustomed to consider the moral 
 views of Friends as something distinct and apart from 
 their theological positions. The questions of war and 
 oaths, in which their beliefs have been different from 
 those of many other Christians, while apparently 
 excellent in themselves, did not seem to have very 
 much bearing on the question of worship and minis- 
 try, and the relation of the individual to the Divine 
 ruler. A further consideration, however, induces the 
 belief that there is a necessary and logical relation 
 between the two, and this relation will be found, I 
 think, to cluster around three closely-associated prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 The first of these is the supremacy of the indi- 
 vidual conscience. This has been always emphasized, 
 and is the logical result of the doctrine of individual 
 divine guidance. The Society has always been what 
 may be called a strongly individualistic society, as 
 opposed to the highly developed organization. The 
 right of a person to determine his own duty in such 
 matters is a necessary corollary of the oft-expressed 
 principle that there is a conscious revelation of God's 
 will, apart from the unconscious enlightenment of 
 the Church. 
 
 On the other hand, it was early seen that some 
 organization was necessary, and during the three long 
 
The Basis of Quaker Morality. 203 
 
 years that George Fox spent in Lancaster and Scar- 
 borough jails, he evolved a system of government for 
 the new Society which it has retained practically in- 
 tact to the present time. Almost immediately there 
 arose the cry that human control was limiting the 
 freedom of spiritual action, and that Fox was false to 
 his own principles of spiritual liberty. How could 
 it be, some said, that any meeting organization could 
 have a place in a church where each individual 
 was supernaturally guided in every line of work, 
 church or secular, which he might undertake ? Was 
 not this a limitation of the very fundamental idea on 
 which Quakerism was based ? And so there arose 
 the Wilkinson-Story division, which carried off a 
 large body of earnest and honest Friends, as well as 
 some who were less respectable. 
 
 Fox and the larger body seemed to have no answer 
 to the arguments adduced, except that they believed 
 that the plan of organization itself was as much a 
 product of divine direction as the commands to the 
 individual could ever be; that God was to work 
 through this organization, and that it would not limit 
 the spiritual opportunities of any individual. The 
 matter was worked over in some good-tempered and 
 much bitter controversy, and the unorganized body, 
 as has always been the case in human history, disin- 
 tegrated and disappeared. The plan of Fox seemed 
 to provide for the very least amount of organization 
 
204 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 consistent with permanency, and to allow to the 
 greatest possible extent the freedom of the individual. 
 While the extremists passed out of existence, the 
 Society still remained most emphatically individual- 
 istic. 
 
 The seceders claimed that Fox was making himself 
 something of a Pope, sending out missionaries and 
 providing for their payment. They opposed singing 
 in meeting, as tending towards a pre-arranged cus- 
 tom. Some went so far as to object to any formal 
 times of meeting, holding that the Spirit would draw 
 Friends together whenever it was proper for them 
 to go. One of the most interesting of the various con- 
 troversies which occurred was one in rhyme betweeen 
 William Kodgers and Thomas Elwood. 
 
 Rodgers says: 
 
 " Preachers approved by man beyond the sea went 
 Who, when they wanted money to proceed, 
 The church her cash did then supply their need." 
 
 Elwood replies: 
 
 " The blest apostles sometimes others sent, 
 And sometimes also, sent by others, went. 
 
 Canst thou imagine they who thus were sent 
 On the mere motion of the apostle went? 
 No ; they no question in themselves did find 
 The same good motion stirring up their mind; 
 With what the good apostle did advise 
 The Holy Ghost in them did harmonize." 
 
The Basis of Quaker Morality. 205 
 
 He asserts: 
 
 " That 'tis the Church's duty to supply 
 The needful wants of all her ministry." 
 
 The same question, I think, also came to an issue 
 in a rather different way, in the Separation of 1827. 
 It is perhaps not the full truth that this was on the 
 line of doctrinal differences exclusively. It would 
 probably be more correct to say that one body consid- 
 ered that questions concerning the divinity and atone- 
 ment of Christ should be left to the individual con- 
 science and judgment, while the other body held that 
 their adoption was essential to membership in the 
 Society of Friends. So through all the ages, in eccle- 
 siastical matters, this controversy has been cropping 
 out, widely affectiag the capacity for work and the 
 attitude towards other difficulties in the life of the 
 Society. 
 
 We have often heard the objection feelingly urged 
 to the appointment of a committee for church work 
 throughout the year, that it is human guidance at- 
 tempting to direct the ministerial function. This is 
 simply an echo of the WilMnson-Story division, and 
 an illustration of the tendency which has always been 
 prominent. It is indeed fortunate that it has been. 
 In a system of behef which involves divine guid- 
 ance one finds it difficult to draw the exact line, where 
 the human agency should cease and the divine direc- 
 tion should begin. It can never be rigidly drawn. 
 
206 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 Does it extend to secular matters, and if so, to what 
 extent? A minister of our Society, now deceased, 
 told me on one occasion, that, desiring to purchase a 
 certain farm, instead of examining the quality of land 
 and its various other advantages, he sat down in the 
 parlor of the house and tried to feel whether the pur- 
 chase was right or not. He thought he received an 
 affirmative response, and concluded the bargain with- 
 out further inquiry, and to his own satisfaction. This, 
 however, we would assume to be an exaggerated appli- 
 cation of a principle which should be limited. A man 
 must use his own powers to their fullest extent. 
 They were given him for that purpose, and while he 
 may probably expect unconscious divine aid if he is 
 doing his duty, he can hardly shift the respon- 
 sibility of the decision from his own judgment 
 to the Holy Spirit. We may well assume that 
 the large success of Friends in philanthropic move- 
 ments has been due to their habit of acting as 
 if divine direction were a reality; but somewhere 
 in the course of human events there is a bor- 
 der line where conscious divine guidance ends and 
 unconscious divine guidance begins. We cannot 
 define it accurately, for it probably varies with differ- 
 ent individuals, and from time to time in the life of 
 the same individual. 
 
 That Friends have not been afraid of organization 
 
The Basis of Quaker Morality. 207 
 
 to promote secular and charitable ends may be seen 
 very clearly in the history of this Province. The 
 responsibilities of government were thrown upon 
 them, and they made no attempt to evade them. 
 There was first the stormy period of adaptation, end- 
 ing about lYlO, during which political forces were as 
 active and political machinery as much in evidence 
 as in any period of the history of the colony or State. 
 Then came the golden days, extending perhaps to 
 1750, when Quaker control was undisputed, and the 
 Quaker machinery of government worked out results 
 as inevitably as does the present machine which 
 controls the fortunes of the State. The same men 
 were high in office in state and in church. Against 
 a proprietor who was continually trying to throw 
 aside popular rights, a deputy who was his faithful 
 and frequently unscrupulous ally, and a minority 
 party which used war and oaths, and the other mat- 
 ters against which Friends protested, as pawns in a 
 political game, the Eriends attained complete and con- 
 tinued success through supremacy in the popular 
 councils. 
 
 John Kinsey, who died in 1750, held many offices, 
 both in church and state. Upon his death the signs of 
 a reaction became more manifest. There grew up a 
 party devoted to withdrawal from State affairs, and 
 signs of a rift in the organization began to appear. 
 
208 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 Though this and the voluntary resignation of the 
 leaders gradually weakened the authority of the 
 Quaker political machine, yet it maintained a large 
 grasp upon the affairs of the government up to the 
 time of the Revolution. That cataclysm ended it; but 
 the organized power of Friends was turned in other 
 directions. It showed itself in such institutions as the 
 Pennsylvania Hospital, the Eastern Penitentiary, the 
 development of educational institutions, the Prank- 
 ford Asylum, and a host of charities. 
 
 Hence we have had the spectacle of a body grow- 
 ing more and more individualistic in church matters, 
 and more and more effective in organization outside 
 of the church. John Kinsey could rule the legisla- 
 ture, with public opinion behind him, and with the 
 aid of a machine, the details of which we know too 
 little about, which sent up a great majority to his 
 support every year; but when he got into the Yearly 
 Meeting, he was one person among the multitude. 
 He no longer carried his points by machinery, but 
 permitted any individual, great or small, who felt that 
 he had a message from above, to break in at any time 
 upon the established order of business. 
 
 It could not be otherwise than that Friends, with 
 their basic principle of Divine guidance, would be 
 faithful to religious liberty. It is perfectly natural, 
 also, that it should have been made a corner-stone for 
 other institutions. Again and again William Penn 
 
The Basis of Quaker Morality. 209 
 
 returns to it with enthusiasm as the most important 
 feature of the new government. Many of his own 
 friends faltered. His legislature, much to his indig- 
 nation, adopted tests which prevented Catholics from 
 talking part in the affairs of government. Some of 
 them could not see the fallacy of the argument that, 
 siace this was a Quaker government, Quakers must 
 have special privileges. But Penn did not waver. 
 He was sure he was right, and he forced the doctrine 
 into every constitution, and it now stands as an im- 
 perishable memorial to his advanced ideas of govern- 
 ment. 
 
 And so it worked out that in government and in 
 private life this principle of liberty of conscience has 
 become a kind of corner-stone of Quaker thought. 
 That which the individual believes to be right, that 
 must he do, and no ecclesiastical or political court, no 
 poWer on earth, can abolish the allegiance which he 
 owes to his God, as understood by him in his own 
 conceptions of duty. 
 
 Conscience is a fickle guide. It varies with every 
 new light one receives. No two honest people think 
 alike. One hardly has the same conscience in all 
 respects for two successive days; and yet to the indi- 
 vidual, for the time being, it is supreme. It is a men- 
 tal faculty through which the voice of God gives its 
 directions, through which the light that comes from 
 the teaching of another individual is recognized. 
 
210 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 through which the subtle magnetisms which crowd 
 in upon the human soul, one hardly knows whence, 
 modifying its beliefs and motives of action, are 
 pressing. 
 
 Conscience is very fallible. 1 have known a young 
 man who was brought into court on the true charge 
 of stealing. His lawyer told him to plead " not 
 guilty," and that there was not evidence enough to 
 convict him. " But," he replied, " I am guilty." 
 " That makes no difference," said the lawyer, " it 
 is only a technical plea. You say ' Not guilty,' 
 and I will take care of the rest." But he said, " I 
 could not tell a lie, and will not plead ' ISTot guilty.' " 
 He did not, and was sent to jail, and while there stole 
 from a fellow prisoner. His conscience was perfectly 
 light on the matter of lying, but did not work at all 
 when it came to stealing. 
 
 A respected moralist tells us iu his book on lying 
 that under no circumstances is deception right. He 
 illustrates it by an incident in his own experience. 
 When he was in Libby prison during the war, he 
 could have escaped if he had told a lie to his guard. 
 His conscience prevented him from using this 
 method, but he says that if he could have killed his 
 guard, it would have been perfectly right. To many 
 of us murder under such circumstances would have 
 been quite as revolting as falsehood. 
 
 It is said that in the Southern colleges a student 
 
The Basis of Quaker Morality. 211 
 
 can get drunk with very little loss of prestige, but 
 that anything like cheating or lying meets with in- 
 stant condemnation, and the culprit is forced out of 
 the institution. In the North, on the contrary, 
 drunkenness is a vice which brings loss of respect, 
 while cheating, under certain conditions, is a very 
 venial fault. One can readily see how differently the 
 conscience of the neutral young man would be edu- 
 cated under different conditions. 
 
 And yet, with it all, the conscience is supreme, and 
 no body more fully recognizes this fact than ours. 
 When we have taken up any subject, such as war, 
 on which our attitude differs from that of other Chris- 
 tian bodies, we have not so much made it a matter of 
 argument as of conscientious conviction, and we have 
 assumed that for us this settles the case. We have, 
 or should have, permitted the same view to be taken 
 by others. While we may admit that the motives 
 which have taken some people to war have been sel- 
 fish, in other cases they have been a stern sense of 
 duty. We have respected this, and have not at- 
 tempted to detract aught from the reputation of the 
 men who, under such influences, have undergone the 
 dreary strain of camp life and the risks of battle. But 
 we have asked that in this respect our own con- 
 sciences should be considered as vitally essential to us. 
 
 The conclusions we must come to with reference 
 to this part of the subject are, therefore, (1) that 
 
212 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 individual liberty in matters of duty has been and 
 should be a prominent feature in Friends' system; 
 (2) that effective organization is needed to do the 
 v/ork, secular and religious, which Friends undertake 
 to do, and as a corollary to the other two; (3) that the 
 organization should be of that elastic sort which in all 
 benevolent work permits the largest freedom for the 
 individual consistent with the general good, and in 
 ministry and worship almost perfect freedom. 
 
 Our second principle is the belief in a moral order, 
 a divine law of right, as against utilitarianism. In 
 our Yearly Meetings how dead has often fallen an 
 appeal in favor of some course of action, on account 
 of its results, which sounded all right. The gallery 
 Friends have been unmoved, because, without their 
 appreciating it, the habit of argument from effect to 
 cause has never been a part of their mental equip- 
 ment. They base their beliefs on a principle, 
 strained perhaps sometimes, and follow where it 
 leads. 
 
 It is difficult to define the moral law, and still more 
 difficult to apply it; but in the evolution of society, 
 certain principles have grown up, based on the con- 
 stitution of man and his relations to his fellows. 
 They are more elusive than many physical laws, but 
 they exist, and when men square their actions by 
 them, they do good, and advance the interests of hu- 
 manity. If they thwart them, they do evil and retard 
 
The Basis of Quaker Morality. 213 
 
 progress, and this is independent of their motives in 
 selecting a given course of action. That they think 
 they see some collateral good to come from a bad 
 action, may excuse the short-sighted doer, but does 
 not avoid the general bad consequences of the im- 
 moral act. These laws may or may not all be written 
 in the sacred books of the various religions. If so, it is 
 but a record of them, not their origination. Some- 
 times, they are embodied in the civil law, and some- 
 times, without doubt, the students of the undevel- 
 oped science of international law have found them. 
 
 jSTow the question comes to the front, Do good men, 
 who hire others to lie for them that good may come, 
 do good nations that commit the manifold iniquities 
 of war, even legitimate war, for the sake of humanity, 
 really do good? It does not aid in answering these 
 questions to point to good results accomplished, for 
 the algebraic sum of results for all time to come must 
 be a positive quantity, if the course is really expedi- 
 ent. A Christian martyr would have had a very 
 plausible case if he had argued that life at the sacri- 
 fice of a little principle would have been better for 
 his cause than an entire removal from opportunities 
 of usefulness; but he would have made a mistake. 
 His law of right, intuitively felt, kept him to his duty, 
 and in the long run the right became the expedient. 
 
 A man (or a nation) might always refuse to do 
 wrong, and take the consequences, if he had the 
 
214 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 courage and the faith; and every one who has 
 more confidence in eternal law than in human 
 prophecy may well hesitate to adopt wrong expedi- 
 ents, whether " ciyilized " or " uncivilized," permitted 
 by law or not permitted, if they transgress the 
 established principles of morals. You do not have to 
 do wrong. You may have to suffer, you may have 
 to die, but no power on the earth or under the earth 
 can make a man do wrong without his own consent. 
 
 At a recent Mohonk Conference a rear-admiral of 
 the navy said: " Christianity has been preached for 
 nineteen centuries, and it would be strange indeed if 
 such results (arbitration) did not follow; for to me, 
 a layman, it seems axiomatic that just in proportion 
 as individuals are guided by the principles of the 
 Golden Rule, war will disappear." 
 
 After such an admission as this, it would seem to a 
 Friend that nothing more need be said. This is his 
 whole contention, and here he rests the case. But 
 others do not. The rear-admiral fights if necessary. 
 So does General Sherman, and so would hosts of 
 Christian ministers who rightly characterize war in 
 their sermons as a barbarous and wicked custom. By 
 what course of argument do they justify their seem- 
 ing incongruity? By argument from results en- 
 tirely. By pointing out the good effects of some wars, 
 and the bad effects it seems to them would follow if 
 they declined war under certain circumstances. 
 
The Basis of Quaker Morality. 215 
 
 The Friend's differences with them are not funda- 
 mental as to the character of war, but he has a dif- 
 ferent system of determining conduct. He prefers 
 to believe that the Divine Ruler of the affairs of men 
 instituted certain moral laws which in the long run 
 will work out the best results. They place their own 
 judgment in the scale, and see a better way which in 
 this particular emergency nullifies the Christian law, 
 and establishes in its place a law of expediency, a law 
 which says, Do as much good as you can in every 
 determination of conduct; choose the less of two 
 evils ; do that which would be otherwise evil that good 
 may come. 
 
 The third feature, again and again impressed upon 
 young Friends, and which has done much to develop 
 the Quaker character, has been the transcendent im- 
 portance of faithfulness in small details. It is only in 
 this way, say the preachers, that spirituality can 
 develop. It is every-day obedience alone which 
 creates strength to meet great emergencies. New 
 light dawns upon the waiting soul when it uses the 
 light previously received. Spiritual strength, as all 
 other strength, comes from exercise. Unfaithfulness 
 in a little matter checks the whole current of divine 
 inflow, and life and growth are not possible till the 
 obstruction is removed. 
 
 So the whole power of conscience is brought to 
 bear on each minute item of conduct, and a careful- 
 
216 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 ress is begotten not rare in the typical Friend. Some- 
 times, as with John Woolman, this leads to self-im- 
 posed restrictions which make life extremely difficult, 
 and at times almost impossible; but which, reacting 
 on character, creates an unselfishness and consecra- 
 tion, an indifference to criticism, and a desire for the 
 approval of conscience only, which often sweetens 
 and dignifies life in the highest degree. This is in 
 harmony with modern psychology, which teaches the 
 force of habit and the power acquired by persistence ; 
 but the Friends did not get it from psychology. It is 
 a definite result of their belief in direct Divine guid- 
 ance, which touches thought and action at every 
 point, making each one of them momentous. 
 
 The best representatives of the type of Friend 
 prevalent a half century ago are held in high esteem. 
 Honest to the core, scrupulously truthful in word 
 and action, with a kindly courtesy which disarmed 
 opposition, yet positively unyielding in a matter of 
 duty, charitable to a fault, yet without publicity, they 
 quite fulfilled one's ideal of the Christian gentleman. 
 From journals and descriptions and from personal 
 acquaintance we know enough to judge how it was 
 that this character was developed. Their life had 
 been hedged around with limitations of conscience. 
 This conscience was the most sacred thing in it. Obe- 
 dience meant blessing, and disobedience meant a 
 curse. The force of habit made the character by in- 
 
The Basis of Quaker Morality. 217 
 
 sensible accumulations of the consequences of right 
 actions. This conscience led them into peculiarities 
 of dress and language which made them separate 
 from other people, and this separateness reacted upon 
 their habits of thought, producing the strong unsel- 
 fish instincts of self -development along spiritual 
 lines. When through preaching or heavenly visita- 
 tion the boy or the girl became awakened to a con- 
 sciousness of guilt and the need of a reformed and 
 renewed life, the first propulsions of conscience came 
 along the line of youthful teaching and example, and 
 in the stress of internal conflict peace was found in 
 external conformity to its demands. This was the 
 beginning, and from this, faithfulness to new revela- 
 tions gradually extinguished the worst forms of sel- 
 fishness, and the mystical tendencies were strength- 
 ened into saintliness and quietude. 
 
 Tennyson's knight, " who reverenced his king as if 
 he were his conscience, and his conscience as his 
 king, who spoke no evil, no, nor listened to it, who 
 rode abroad redressing human wrong," was a Quaker 
 in disguise. 
 
 Do any Friends pass through this spiritual disci- 
 pline to-day? and if not, is the old type to be lost? 
 To adopt means of self-mortification simply for disci- 
 pline's sake is a form of asceticism which is only a sec- 
 ondary product of Quakerism. It was not the origi- 
 nal idea. The singular pronoun and the hat ques- 
 
iil8 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 tion were protests in favor of human equality. The 
 plain dress was a testimony against extravagant 
 fashions. They were originally " openings," to use 
 George Fox's expression, which struck at some cur- 
 rent evil and sought its abolishment. All of John 
 Woolman's conscientious restrictions were accepted 
 by him, not for his own sake, but to reform society. 
 Incidentally they developed and sweetened his own 
 character, but this was a secondary and unsought 
 result. 
 
 Does not this indicate the line of thought and 
 action for present-day Friends ? An easy Quakerism, 
 one that gives its life up to business as the ordinary 
 business man follows it, and its leisure to pleasant 
 recreation, that will not follow a purer morality than 
 the world accepts, regardless of losses and suffering 
 and hardness and discomfort, may make very reputa- 
 ble citizens and men of honor and standing; but it will 
 not make Friends. The fact that they hold certain 
 beliefs different from other bodies does not neces- 
 sarily change their characters, and without a change 
 of spirit and of character the old and best mind of the 
 past cannot exist. 
 
 When the Society of Friends becomes simply a 
 body of estimable gentlemen carrying on philan- 
 thropic and educational activities, in an honest 
 and efficient way, mthout a deep, underlying sense 
 
The Basis of Quaker Morality. 219 
 
 of self-sacrificing duty, then a new and inferior type 
 of Quakerism is developed. 
 
 The old peculiarities of garb and speech seem to 
 be passing away. This may or may not be a subject 
 of regret. I notice that many Friends are sorry that 
 others are not maintaining the testimonies. This, 
 however, is only sentiment, and not conviction. They 
 did have their disciplinary value for our fathers and 
 mothers, and if they go, shall there be any substi- 
 tutes ? 
 
 The answer to this question seems to me to be that 
 new testimonies must arise to take their place, testi- 
 monies which will involve the same seK-denial, and 
 which will appeal to the consciences of the present 
 age. The evils of the world have not all disappeared. 
 Obsequiousness may have largely gone; democ- 
 racy mky be established in the hearts of men, and the 
 " thee " and the " thou " may have lost their value. 
 But the business man cannot do his work, the profes- 
 sional man cannot practice his profession, the man of 
 leisure cannot enjoy his recreation, without being 
 conscious of many departures from strict rectitude in 
 the standards of the times. There will be many an 
 opportunity to do his duty against prevailing senti- 
 ment, and doubtless oftentimes to his own financial 
 or social loss and discomfort. He must stand up to 
 his duty, and not fall in with the world and its spirit 
 and methods. 
 
220 Quakerism and Politics. 
 
 Then there are the great world-wide evils of 
 society. Is strong drink an evil ? Then a testimony 
 of no uncertain character must be held up against it, 
 even should this involve abstinence from a habit not 
 hurtful, and often pleasurable to one's self. Is war 
 an evil ? A few Quaker martyrs, with the consciences 
 of those that in Cromwell's day went to jail for 
 not taking an oath, might aid in ending it. He who 
 lives in the spirit of these old martyrs will find plenty 
 of living testimonies which he may and must adopt, 
 and he, too, will find, like them, a secondary effect, 
 which he will not strive for directly, in a sweetened 
 and purified and exalted Christian character. Testi- 
 monies against evil, each one adopting his own from 
 Lis own revelations of duty, to which he must be ever 
 attentive, pressed upon an unbelieving generation 
 with all faithfulness and all tenderness, to be lived 
 for and died for, will continue to produce the best of 
 the old type of Friend. 
 
INDEX. 
 
IJSTDEX. 
 
 Ap John, John, convinced by George Fox, 145 
 
 Ashbridge, George, on " backing out," 86 
 
 Assembly of Pennsylvania, struggle over war appropria- 
 tions, 45 ; triumph in elections, 47 
 
 Bancroft, George, on Quaker government of North Caro- 
 lina, 82 
 
 " Barony," The Welsh, 140, 148 
 
 Bryan, George, author of abolition law, 178 
 
 Bryn Mawr, " speak-easy "in, 17 
 
 Constitution, Federal, Pennsylvania's ratification of, 73 
 
 Davies, Isaac, sufferings of, 156 
 
 Davies, Richard, story of his courtship, 146 ; persecution of, 148 
 
 Fothergill, Dr., criticism of John Kinsey, 134 
 
 Fox, George, convinces John ap John, 145; organization of 
 
 Society of Friends, 203 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, on Friends and war, 37; on Friends, . 130 
 
 Germans, sympathy with Friends on war, 132 
 
 Hamilton, Alexander, trade of votes with Jefferson, 74 
 
 Hamilton, Andrew, on Penn's constitution, 42, 57, 114 
 
 Harrison, General W. H., on the character of the Indians . , 33 
 
 Indians, esteem for Penn, 35 ; General Harrison's opinion of, 33 
 
 James, Professor William, on Quakerism, 180 
 
 Keith, Governor, order to remove hat, 115 
 
 Kinsey, John, in politics and religious affairs, ... .86, 115, 208 
 
224 Index. 
 
 Lloyd, David, first Pennsylvania "boss," 84; defeat of, . Ill 
 Lloyd, Thomas, emigration to Pennsylvania, 149; dispute 
 
 with Governor Blackwell, 151 
 
 Logan, James, views on war, 128 
 
 Lotteries, prevalence of, 38 
 
 Moon, James, work against slavery, 164 
 
 Morris, Gouverneur, opinion of the Second Congress, 75 
 
 Norris, Isaac, explains grant of money to the Queen, Ill 
 
 Oaths, Friends' testimony against, 40 
 
 Parkman, Francis, on Penn's policy, 32 
 
 Pastorius, Francis Daniel, emigration to Pennsylvania, . . 14!) 
 
 Pemberton, Israel, Jr., contest with Gov. Keith, 135 
 
 Pemberton, James, letter of, 68 
 
 Penn, William, advanced views, 19; his constitution for 
 Pennsylvania, 21, 52; his dealings with the Indians, 
 31; Diet of Nations, 36; advice to his children, 79; 
 debts of, 80; biographer's opinion of, 107; views about 
 
 war, 123, 125; grant of Welsh " Barony," 150 
 
 Philosophical Society, American, 44 
 
 Roberts, John, put to death, 157 
 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, "Life of Benton," 51; a consistent 
 
 partisan, 102 
 
 Sauer, Christopher, influence in Pennsylvania, 132 
 
 Smith, Dr. William, on Quaker success in politics, 131 
 
 Thomas, George, lieutenant-governor of Pennsylvania, 117; 
 controversy with Assembly about war, 118; salary cut 
 off, 129 
 
 Washington, George, denunciations of, 74 
 
 Wilkinson-Story division in Society of Friends, 203 
 
 Woolman, John, work against slavery, 161 
 
 Wynne, Dr. Thomas, emigration to Pennsylvania, 149