which moved him to seize the opportunity which
offered in the settlement of his deceased father's claim on the
government to secure a grant of territory and privilege to form a free
state in America--first for his own, and then for all other persecuted
people.

AN ESTIMATE OF PENN.

It may be that Penn has been betimes a little overrated. He has, and
deserves, a high place in the history of our commonwealth, but he was
not the real founder of it; for its foundations were laid years before
he was born and more than forty years before he received his charter.
He founded Pennsylvania only as Americus Vespucius discovered America.
Neither was he the author of those elements of free government, equal
rights, and religious liberty which have characterized our
commonwealth. They were the common principles of Luther and the
Reformation, and were already largely embodied for this very
territory[34] long before Penn's endeavors, as also, in measure, in
the Roman Catholic colony of Maryland from the same source.

Nor was he, in his own strength, possessed of so much wise forethought
and profound legislative and executive ability as that with which he
is sometimes credited. But he was a conscientious, earnest, and
God-fearing man, cultured by education and grace, gifted with
admirable address, sincere and philanthropic in his aims, and guided
and impelled by circumstances and a peculiar religious zeal which
Providence overruled to ends far greater than his own intentions or
thoughts.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] See sketch of the plan of Gustavus Adolphus for his colony, page
143, and the instructions given to Governor Printz in 1642.

PENN AND THE INDIANS.

What is called Penn's particular policy toward the Indians, and the
means of his successes in that regard, existed in practical force
scores of years before he arrived. His celebrated treaties with them,
as far as they were fact, were but continuations and repetitions
between them and the English, which had long before been made between
them and the Swedes, who did more for these barbarian peoples than he,
and who helped him in the matter more than he helped himself.

We are not fully informed respecting all the first instructions given
to Governor Minuit when he came hither with Pennsylvania's original
colony in 1637-38, but there is every reason to infer that they
strictly corresponded to those given to his successor, Governor
Printz, five years afterward, on his appointm