the Christian religion and to the interest of the nation. It was thought very unreasonable that, while we were complaining of the cruelty of the Church of Rome, we should fall into such practices among ourselves, and this while we were engaging in a war, in the progress of which we would need the united strength of the whole nation.”

This great Act having passed, William Penn thought of returning to America. But as the authors of infant projects, when ushered into the world, feel interested both in watching their progress and their fate, so he felt his inclination checked in this respect for a time from the same cause. He felt a desire to see how this new-born babe would be received in the kingdom; how far the popular fury would be likely to retard, or its favour to promote its growth. Impressed by such feelings, he resolved to protract his stay to the ensuing year.

In the beginning of this year Captain Blackwell left Boston for Philadelphia. On his arrival there he delivered his appointment to the Commissioners, and, as soon as it was acknowledged by these, he took into his hands the reins of the Government.

After

After a suitable time he summoned the Council and Assembly. He made a speech to the latter, after which he held himself ready to proceed upon the business of the Province. He had not, however, been long in office before a misunderstanding took place between him and some of the Council, so that the public affairs were not managed with the desired harmony. He found it often difficult to get so many of them together as would make a legal meeting for business, though more than this number were known to be in the city at the time. He not only saw, but lamented to the Assembly, that dissentions still existed among them. them. At one time the Keeper of the Great Seal refused him the use of it on what he (Blackwell) thought (though he might have been mistaken) a proper occasion. These differences between the Deputy Governor and the two Legislatures were early reported to William Penn. All sides made their complaints to him. Of course he was called upon to consider them. Having done this, he wrote to Blackwell, and advised his resignation. The latter, finding that he could not do what had been expected

of

of him in the administration of the Province, honourably resigned his office, and returned to England, after a short stay in Philadel phia of only a few months.

In a letter written by William Penn to a Friend there, he unfolded more particularly than before the reason why he had appointed Blackwell to the high station of Deputy Governor. It appears that it had always been his wish to confer the Government on a Quaker, as one in whom he himself would have had the most confidence: but there was no Quaker fit for it who would undertake it, persons of that persuasion being generally averse from high political employments. Obliged then to seek out elsewhere, he preferred one who was a stranger to the Province, under a notion that he might be more impartial and more reverenced: but of all strangers Blackwell seemed to him to be the most eligible; for, says he, "he is in England and Ireland of great repute for ability, integrity, and virtue. I thought I did well. It was for good, God knows, and for no end of my own."

What was the cause of dispute between Blackwell and the other branches of the

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Legislature is not known. It is possible that Blackwell might have made himself obnoxious by attending to the business of the quit-rents more closely than was liked. It is possible, again, that he might have disgusted some by the levity of his deportment; for he was a polished man: he had mixed with great and fashionable people, and had seen the world. The members of the Legislature, on the other hand, were mostly of the class of Puritans, and of severe manners. They had been rendered still more sour by persecution. It is possible therefore that they might at their first interview, under these opposite aspects, have appeared cool and reserved to him; and that he, fancying this appearance real, might have looked shy upon them. It is possible, again, that they might have been prejudiced against him as a military man. But whatever was the case, certain it is, from the letter just mentioned, that William Penn was induced to suspect, after an attentive consideration of all the evidence before him, that Blackwell's peevishness did not so much arise from ,any misconduct in him in the first instance as in them. "You see," says he, “what I

have done upon the complaints; but I must

say, that his peevishness to some Friends has not risen out of the dust without occasion.'

On the departure of Blackwell the Execu tive Government reverted, according to the Constitution, to the Council, of which Thomas Lloyd, not willing to desert the State at this juncture, resumed the Presidency; so that, having passed through the two changes, first of five Commissioners, and then of a Lieutenant Governor with two Assistants, it came back to its old form, as settled by the first General Assembly in 1683.

There are several letters extant, which William Penn wrote to his Friends in America this year. In the first of these, which was written in the early part of it and before the coronation of William and Mary, he repeated the cause which had so long hindered him from seeing them. "Europe," says he, "looks like a sea of trouble. Wars are like to be all over it this summer. I strongly desire to see you before it be spent, if the Lord will; and I can say in his sight, that to improve my interest with King James for tender consciences, and that a Christian liberty might be legally settled, though against

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