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.pennsylvaniaAfter 1681, a new colony Pennsylvania occupied the opposite side of the Dela-ware River from New Jersey.Penn could have contented himself with the develop-ment of West Jersey, but his restlessness and his declining finances led him to abolder stroke.He petitioned the crown to settle outstanding debts to his dead fatherby giving him the land between Virginia and New York.His petition for a proprietary grant was perfectly timed.The Stuarts were fendingoff a movement in Parliament to exclude James from the succession to the throne,and Penn was a strong supporter of the duke.In November 1680, a draft of Penn scharter was sent by Charles II to his legal advisers.Unlike earlier proprietary char-ters, whose boundaries and terms were often vague, Penn s charter underwent strictscrutiny by the chief justice of England and other royal legal experts to ensure thatPennsylvanians (unlike the settlers of the Carolinas and the Jerseys) obeyed the lawsof England.Royal fears that the inhabitants of the new colony would ignore the lawson trade initially cost Penn the right to control the military, give the laws, and settlechurches, but subsequent amendments restored these powers, and the charter is-sued in February 1681.The HavenPenn quickly moved to make his colony a haven for his coreligionists, Quakerslong persecuted in England, Wales, and Puritan New England.Penn and his salesagents lobbied diligently among the wealthy Quakers of the Society of Free Traders,offering special privileges for purchases of ten thousand acres or more.Although hecourted the  first purchasers who bought the largest tracts, his prospectus (onceagain called the Concessions) guaranteed fifty acres to every servant after their termof service.To all prospective immigrants he promised:  Those that go into a foreignplantation, their industry there is worth more than if they stay d at home, the prod-212 WORLDS I N MOTI ONuct of their labor being in commodities of a superior nature to those of this coun-try.More being produced and imported than we can spend here, we export it toother countries in Europe, which brings in money.In April 1681, he sent his cousin William Markham to the Delaware Valley to in-form its inhabitants of his plans and survey the land.Markham chose the site for thefuture capital of the colony, Philadelphia, and purchased the land from Swedes liv-ing there.In October, the first group of settlers left for the colony.Most came fromLondon and its environs, but the original 587 purchasers included Welsh and Ger-mans.Francis Daniel Pastorius, a Frankfurt lawyer and agent for German immi-grants, obtained a grant to the north and west of the city for his countrymen andwomen, and  Germantown soon filled with immigrants.Nearly half were crafts-people, but a fair number were well-to-do merchants and professional people.In the first two years of settlement, four thousand men, women, and childrensailed up the Delaware and alit on the Pennsylvania side, and by 1685 there were eightthousand people in Penn s new colony.Fully one-third were indentured servants,joined by a mass of yeomen farmers and artisans.The wealthiest purchasers did notcome, sending others to farm their land and build houses in the city.Still, a goodnumber of the lesser purchasers removed to Pennsylvania, and they became the elitein this truncated social hierarchy.Penn s prospectus for the new colony became its Frame of Government (1682).Penn could have distributed the land in his grant and run its government as he chose,but from the start he encouraged participatory self-government among the colonists.Although he believed in government by  men of wisdom and virtue, he opened thedoor to far broader power sharing.Scholars believe that Penn had read James Harrington s utopian essay, The Com-monwealth of Oceana (1656).In this imaginary community, there were no hereditarykings or nobles, for Oceana was a republic.Offices were to be elective, rotated, andbased upon the consent of  the people. Servants, women, and the poor could notvote, because, Harrington supposed, they did not exercise independent judgment.So revolutionary were Harrington s views (and so imprudent was his continued ad-vocacy of them after the restoration of Charles II) that the king clamped Harringtonin jail on a phony charge of conspiracy.He died there, insane, in 1677.Penn no doubt knew Harrington s fate, but shared Harrington s commitment torotation of officeholders and participation by the  democracy in government.Inboth his West Jersey Concessions and his Frames of Government for Pennsylvania,Penn provided for a council composed of the leading planters and an elective as-sembly, the latter with the power to accept or reject his and the council s legislation.The rights Penn guaranteed included jury trial, which had saved the Quakers fromconviction in English courts, along with moderate punishment for crimes, modestfees for civil litigation, the right to counsel, and protection against arbitrary searchesTHE MI DDLE COLONI ES 213and seizures.Social misconduct, wantonness, abuse of officials, and violent conductwere punishable, but the penalties were far less severe than anywhere else in theking s domains or the colonies [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]