point the constitutions of Pennsylvania and Delaware, and after them the constitution of the United States, owe an eternal obligation to Sydney. Penn, like More, like Harrington, and the writers on Utopian schemes, desired to have a fixed system of public law. He would have drawn his constitutions and offered them to the world as the conditions of settlement in his new colony. Shaftsbury and Baltimore had adopted such a mode. With ruling instinct, Sydney saw that a democracy is incompatible with a foreign body of constitutional law. He proposed, therefore, to leave this question open. Having fixed the great boundary-lines of the system-secured freedom of thought (always Penn's first care), sacredness of person and property, popular control over all the powers of the state, financial, civil, proprietorial, and judicial-the lawgivers left the new democracy to develope itself in accordance with its natural wants. America owes much to Sydney.

An outline of the new political system being drawn up, Penn began to organise. The elements were prepared. So soon as it was whispered that the champion of trial by jury had become the owner and governor of a province in the New World, and that he proposed to settle it on the broadest principles of popular right, from nearly every large town in the three kingdoms, and from many cities of the Rhine and Holland, agents were despatched to treat with the new lord for lands. Societies were formed for emigration. A German company started up at Frankfort. Franz Pastorius

came to London, where he bought fifteen thousand acres lying in one tract on a navigable river, and three thousand acres within the liberties of the new city. Liverpool furnished many purchasers and settlers, London more. At Bristol a company was organised under the name of Free Society of Traders in Pennsylvania; and in the autumn Penn rode down to that city to confer with Moore, Ford, Claypole, and other adventurers on their plans. Penn was anxious to encourage skilful manufacturers of wool to migrate from the neighbourhood of Bristol and the valley of Stroud; for in the early stage of his experiment these were the staples on which he based his expectations of success. Desiring freedom for trade as well as freedom for the person, he resisted every temptation to reserve to himself profitable monopolies, just as in his constitutions he had refused to retain official patronage. A few weeks after the charter was issued, Thurston and Maryland sent an agent to offer him a fee of 6000l. and 2 per cent as rental, if he would allow a company to be formed with an exclusive right to trade in beaverskins between the Delaware and Susquehannah rivers. Other proprietors granted such monopolies ; Penn's right to grant them was unquestionable; but he felt that such monopolies were unjust, and he refused the money and the yearly rent. A Free Society of Traders realised one of his own ideas, and he afforded the Bristol company great facilities. Nicolas Moore, a lawyer, was appointed chairman of this company. Having bought twenty thousand acres of land, they published articles of trade, and

commenced preparations for the voyage.

Some per

sons from the principality joined the Bristol colonists, and zeal being backed by money, things were soon so far advanced that a vessel filled with emigrants, and taking out the chairman, Nicolas Moore, was ready to set sail.

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CHAPTER XXIII.

CLEARING GROUND (1681–82).

PHILIP FORD, a Bristol Quaker and a leading member of the Free Society of Traders, gained the confidence of Penn, and was appointed as his agent in the western port. This Ford was one of those sedate and sallow rogues who made a business of religion, and was lashed by every writer for the comic stage. He had the face of Cantwell and the hand of Overreach. Penn saw that he was quick and ceremonious, and fancied he was honest and sincere. For many years he was the agent through whose hands receipts and payments on the largest scale were made, but many years elapsed before the family of Penn became aware how much of what was properly their own stuck fast to Ford.

When Markham landed on the Delaware he made known a letter from Penn to the people of Pennsylvania, under date of April 8, 1681, announcing the issue of his patent, and explaining the spirit in which he should proceed to plant a free state in that country. Then he called the Indian sachems into council, and surprised the redskins by

inquiring whether they would sell a piece of land near the Trenton Falls to the new lord; and if so, what would be their price? The new lord, whom the great King had set to rule and own the country, was, he said, a just man, who would neither do them wrong himself nor suffer any of his sons to do them wrong. He meant to live with them in love; to buy their lands if he should want it; and to trade with them in open market, as a white man bought and sold with white men. In July the terms of sale were fixed; in August they were signed by Markham on behalf of Penn, and by the various sachems who had claims on the estate; and Colonel Markham set about to clear the woods and stake the buildings of the homestead afterwards known as Pennsbury Manor. Markham had less success with Baltimore than with the Indians; but his opening moves in that game of chance and skill-the boundary question-left a deep impression of his tact. in truth too able and too worldly in such things to be a fitting deputy for an idealist like Penn.

He was

While Markham was buying Pennsbury Manor from the sachems, Penn was putting out in London articles of concession for intending colonists. In these concessions he described the country and the constitution, and he dwelt with vigour on the line of conduct he intended to pursue towards natives of the soil. From Cortez and Pizarro downwards, Europeans in America had treated the aborigines as property. Not content with robbing them of their lands, their lakes, their hunting-grounds, their ornaments of pearl and gold, the pale-faces from Seville