QUAKER GOVERNMENT IN
PENNSYLVANIA

VOLUME I.

A QUAKER EXPERIMENT IN GOVERNMENT

BY ISAAC SHARPLESS

PRESIDENT OF HAVERFORD COLLEGE

"For my country I eyed the Lord in the obtaining of
it, and more was I drawn inward to look to him and to
owe it to his hand and power, than to any other way. I
have so obtained it and desire that I may not be un-
worthy of his love and do that which may answer his
kind providence and serve his truth and people; that an
example may be set up to the nations; there may be room
there though not here for such a holy experiment."
WILLIAM PENN.

Philadelphia:

T. S. LEACH & COMPANY

29 NORTH SEVENTH STREET

1898

PREFACE.

Ir is not at all unlikely that this contribution to the early history of Pennsylvania will show a bias towards the habits of thought and action which have characterized the religion of the ancestors of the writer. If so it is unintentional.

The purpose of the book is to include, with other sources of information, the contemporary Quaker view. This has been gained by a careful examination of Meeting Records and private letters of the times, and a fairly intimate personal acquaintance with many who probably represent, in this generation, in their mental and moral characteristics, the "Quaker Governing Class" of the first century of the province.

The ordinary public sources of information have, of course, been used; but a dependence on these alone would incur the danger, if not of misrepresenting facts, at the best of giving to them a wrong coloring.

While the general ideas of Quakerism were worked out in Penn's Frame of Government, they were not fully manifest in the subsequent history

of the province, nor even in the Acts of the Assembly, though this body was controlled by Friends until 1756.

The minutes of the Yearly and other Meetings would give a different idea of the political principles and bias of Friends from that to be gathered from the printed proceedings of either the Council or the Legislature, and all should be considered in making up a correct historical judgment.

The efforts of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania have brought together much unused material. An authentic and impartial history of Colonial Pennsylvania is yet to be written.

Haverford College,

1898.

I. S.