WILLIAM PENN 293 



strove in England a century and a half later. The 

 Quakers had learned in the fires of persecution the lesson 

 of charity and tolerance : no law bound the conscience 

 of any man, nor were oaths exacted. Indeed such 

 freedom was allowed to the immigrants who flowed 

 constantly into the colony that in the end the Friends 

 lost control of the state, for they had come to form but 

 a small minority of the population. Peace reigned 

 throughout the land, such as was seen in no other colony : 

 there was no militia, though power to raise one had been 

 included -in the charter granted by the Crown ; and no 

 force was used in the conduct of government except to 

 restrain individual disturbers of order. 



Penn had himself but scanty comfort from the state he 

 had founded on such enlightened principles. He was the 

 Proprietor, and aimed to be a sort of gracious overlord. 

 But the sturdy men and women of his religion who had 

 followed his banner across the Atlantic, people of inde- 

 pendent and enterprising mind from England, Germany 

 and Holland, used the institutions he had set up to wrest 

 larger and larger measures of liberty from his hand. 

 Despite the great proprietary estates, and the quit-rents 

 which existed on paper, the province was a continual 

 drain of expense to its founder, and his spirit was harassed 

 by many contests with his Quaker Assembly. Already 

 in his later time there were three parties in the state : the 

 Proprietor with his Council : the Popular or Quaker 

 party, with whom the Germans were counted ; and the 

 Opposition or non-Quaker, which sought to change the 

 government to that of a Crown Colony and to set up 

 an established Church. This last party enlisted much 

 English sympathy and support. But the Friends were 

 firmly rooted ; they were men of steadfast and prosperous 

 lives ; and they maintained unbroken under a high sense 

 of responsibility for many years the liberties which Penn 

 had granted them. Some thirty years of comparative 

 quiet followed Penn's withdrawal in 1710 from his active 

 labours. Meanwhile the Friends had come to be out- 

 numbered by two to one ; the Proprietaries, Penn's 



