ment. This was quite an advanced thought. Locke had provided that his Carolina constitution should never be altered, and other constitutions and charters were silent on the subject. But all American frames of government are now like Penn's, and contain a provision for their orderly amendment without violence or revolution.

His method of impeachment, by which the lower house was to bring the impeachment, and the upper house to try it, was also new in American governments, and is now universal among them. He was also the first person to lay down the principle that any law which violated the constitution should be void. Constitution-makers had been much troubled to provide a method to protect their constitutions from violation, and had suggested various complicated devices. But Penn was the first one to hit upon the foundation or first step in the true principle, now the universal law in the United States, that the unconstitutional law is void. If he had taken the next step, and provided that the courts had power to declare such a law void whenever it came before them in a case, he would have been the inventor of the complete system as we now have it. But this step of declaring such power in the courts was not made until one hundred years after his time.*

Taken altogether, this constitution was very characteristic of Penn. It was an earnest, zealous attempt to attain the best sort of government; but, as often

see

* For a full discussion of these provisions in Penn's constitution, "The Evolution of the Constitution," pp. 60, 184.

happened with him, some of its idealism was not successful; and yet in the end, when all was said and done, his untiring energy had furnished some ideas and principles of permanent value.

The final draft of the constitution was dated April 25, 1682, and was agreed to by Penn and some of those who were to go out to the province. They also, a few weeks later, agreed upon certain laws which, with the constitution, they intended to take out to Pennsylvania and propose to the people there for their acceptance. These laws contained many of the advanced ideas which had for many years been animating the Quakers.

All prisons were to be work-houses and places for reformation and cleanliness, instead of the pestilential dungeons of idleness, dirt, and increasing vice in which the Quakers had suffered so much wretchedness and death in England. An attempt was made to abolish lawyers and lessen litigation by providing that every one might plead his own cause, and, as the ancient adage has it, have a fool for a client. Trial by jury was carefully established, but no oaths were required. All children were to be taught some useful trade, a practice which the Quakers had long advocated, but had not been able to enforce among all their members, and they were equally unsuccessful in enforcing it by law in Pennsylvania.

Religious liberty was, of course, established in these laws; but only in the sense in which it was then sometimes understood, and was confined to those who believed in God. Atheists were not within the sphere of its protection. Similarly, no

one could hold office in the government unless he professed faith in Jesus Christ. This was not the

first establishment of liberty of conscience in the colonies. It had been established by the charter of Rhode Island in 1663, in East Jersey in 1655, by Locke's Carolina constitution of 1669, and in West Jersey in 1677, and rather more liberally and broadly than Penn established it, for it was not confined to those who believed in God.

The Quakers were very much opposed to capital punishment, especially the wholesale capital punishment for minor offences prevailing at that time in England. Accordingly, we find in Penn's code only treason and murder deemed worthy of death; and the property of murderers, instead of being forfeited to the state, was divided among the next of kin of the sufferer and of the criminal.

Penn's biographers have usually given him the credit of all these very advanced ideas; but it is hardly just, for they were the ideas of the Quakers, and he was merely trying to put them in practice.

There were also laws which reflected the puritan feeling among the Quakers. Cursing, swearing, drunkenness, health-drinking, cards, dice, gambling, stage-plays, scolding, and lying in conversation, were strictly prohibited.

XVI

FIRST VISIT TO THE PROVINCE

At last, in the summer of 1682, a little more than a year after he had received his charter, he was ready to start for Pennsylvania. For his wife and children he left a letter of farewell, which is the most beautiful, perhaps the only really beautiful, thing he ever wrote.

The diffuseness and dulness of his usual style disappear entirely in this letter. He does not labor to prove dry propositions, but speaks with a reality and directness which seem to show that his nature was strongest and at its best when aroused by tenderness and affection. From several passages in the letter one may infer that he had learned from experience that this tender side was also his weak side, and that he saw the danger of wasting one's energy in friendships.

"Guard against encroaching friendships. Keep them at arm's end: for it is giving away our power-age and self too, into the possession of another; and that which might seem engaging in the beginning may prove a yoke and burden too hard and heavy in the end. Wherefore keep dominion over thyself, and let thy children, good meetings, and Friends be the pleasure of thy life.”

Another passage is of interest, not only for the natural way in which it is expressed, but because it gives us a glimpse of his wife, the pretty Guli whom he had married with so much love ten years before.

"Therefore honor and obey her, my dear children, as your mother and your father's love and delight; nay love her too, for she loved your father with a deep and upright love, choosing him above all her many suitors; and though she be of a delicate constitution and noble spirit, yet she descended to the utmost tenderness and care for you, performing the plainest acts of service to you in your infancy, as a mother and a nurse too. I charge you before the Lord, honor and obey, love and cherish, your dear mother."

From this letter we learn also that Penn was at that time already in debt. He lived well, and his family and the public projects in which he was absorbed consumed more than his rather large income. So he begs his wife to be saving. "Remember," he says, "thy mother's example, when thy father's public spiritedness had wasted his estate (which is my case)."

On the 30th of August he embarked at Deal, on board the "Welcome," with about one hundred passengers. About eight weeks afterwards, on the 24th of October, he was within the capes of the Delaware. It had been a long voyage, and, as not infrequently happened in those days, small-pox broke out among the passengers, and thirty died at sea.

Three days more were required for the "Welcome" to beat up the river to New Castle, then the capital, so to speak, or most important village on the Delaware. It was within the territory the Duke of York had given him, and he took possession of it by the delivery of "turf and twig and water," as the ancient feudal form prescribed.

On the 29th of the month he sailed still farther up the river to Upland, where Markham was awaiting him, and this village was within the province of