, could find credit only with the undiscerning
multitude; but with these calumnies were mingled accusations much better
founded.

To speak the whole truth concerning Penn is a task which requires some
courage; for he is rather a mythical than a historical person. Rival
nations and hostile sects have agreed in canonising him. England is
proud of his name. A great commonwealth beyond the Atlantic regards him
with a reverence similar to that which the Athenians felt for Theseus,
and the Romans for Quirinus. The respectable society of which he was a
member honours him as an apostle. By pious men of other persuasions he
is generally regarded as a bright pattern of Christian virtue. Meanwhile
admirers of a very different sort have sounded his praises. The French
philosophers of the eighteenth century pardoned what they regarded as
his superstitious fancies in consideration of his contempt for priests,
and of his cosmopolitan benevolence, impartially extended to all races
and to all creeds. His name has thus become, throughout all civilised
countries, a synonyme for probity and philanthropy.

Nor is this high reputation altogether unmerited. Penn was without doubt
a man of eminent virtues. He had a strong sense of religious duty and a
fervent desire to promote the happiness of mankind. On one or two points
of high importance, he had notions more correct than were, in his day,
common even among men of enlarged minds: and as the proprietor and
legislator of a province which, being almost uninhabited when it came
into his possession, afforded a clear field for moral experiments,
he had the rare good fortune of being able to carry his theories into
practice without any compromise, and yet without any shock to existing
institutions. He will always be mentioned with honour as a founder of
a colony, who did not, in his dealings with a savage people, abuse the
strength derived from civilisation, and as a lawgiver who, in an age of
persecution, made religious liberty the cornerstone of a polity. But his
writings and his life furnish abundant proofs that he was not a man of
strong sense. He had no skill in reading the characters of others. His
confidence in persons less virtuous than himself led him into great
errors and misfortunes. His enthusiasm for one great principle sometimes
impelled him to violate other great principles which he ought to
have held sacred. Nor was his rectitude altogether proof against the
temptations to which i