USA > Pennsylvania > The social and intellectual state of the colony of Pennsylvania prior to the year 1743 > Part 1
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Gc 974.8 T98s 1652525
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01202 7675
E
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THE
SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL STATE
OF THE
COLONY OF PENNSYLVANIA
PRIOR TO THE YEAR 1743.
[READ BEFORE THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, AT ONE OF THE SPECIAL MEETINGS, HELD ON THE 29th DAY OF MAY, 1843, IN COMEMMO- RATION OF ITS HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY.]
BY
JOB R. TYSON.
nemo generosior est te ; * *
* * * Ut plerique solent, naso suspendis adunco Ignotos, ut me libertino patre natum : Cum referre negas, quali sit quisque parente Natus, dum ingenuus. HOR. Sat. 6.
- bona nec sua quisque recuset, Nam genus et proavos et qua non fecimus ipsi, Vix ea nostra voco. OVID, Met. Lib. 13.
Platonem non accepit nobilem philosophia, sed fecit. SENECA.
PHILADELPHIA:
JOHN C. CLARK, PRINTER, 60 DOCK STREET. 1843.
1.05.2016
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THE
SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL STATE
OF
THE COLONY OF PENNSYLVANIA
PRIOR TO THE YEAR 1743.
IT may not be an unpleasing nor altogether useless task, now that one hundred years have passed over this institution, to recall the pe- culiar condition of society to which it owed its rise. A survey of the state of knowledge, principles, and taste among the early inhabitants of Pennsylvania, will show how far a love of science, as well as letters, had been implanted in the colony at the first settlement; and how far this was cherished by the generations which succeeded. I propose to bring before the Society some evidence that its formation in 1743, was the direct result of pre-existing causes; and that the success which has followed it, is less owing to the happy or fortuitous circumstances which attended its birth, than to the steady operation of other influences which were coeval with the establishment of the English province.
The social and intellectual state of the colony of Pennsylvania, when its population did not exceed a few thousand persons, has not been considered by the philosopher and historian. But the impor- tance of such a consideration will be increased, if instead of viewing the emigrants as private persons, who had sought shelter from the
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frowns of power, or come in quest of religious freedom, we regard them as the seeds of an independent empire, fraught for weal or for wo, through coming time, with the influence impressed by the per- sonal characters, the principles and policy of the adventurers.
In this point of view, the subject rises to an elevation sufficient to engage upon its study the best powers of the mind. It is for this reason I go back to the early settlement of the province, in order to determine the mind and sympathies which predominated in 1743. It is there we must seek the elements of the future,-the seeds which afterwards flourished to maturity,-the foundations of the structure which we at present see.
A colony of Swedes, invited by an edict of their monarch, the cele- brated Gustavus Adolphus, and encouraged by the countenance of his daughter Christina, alighted on the shores of the Delaware, before the middle of the seventeenth century. These colonists seem to have been a frugal, honest and worthy race; but I cannot find, that either they or their Dutch invaders paid much attention to the interests of learning. The colony of New Sweden was small in number, the inhabitants were extremely illiterate, and its social state one of unat- tractive rudeness, of unalloyed but rustic simplicity.
The English settlement by Penn was more numerous, and project- ed with loftier aims. It occurred at a propitious period, and under circumstances favourable to the development of a healthy national character. The civil wars of England, and the great rebellion in which they terminated, were past. The fury of religious persecution was stayed, and the heat of religious controversy, though still excited and feverish, was not as before to be quenched by blood. A new order of men had arisen out of the burning cauldron of puritanism, which, though partaking of the puritan leaven, was tempered by
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cooler heads and milder tenets. The Quaker sect, at the head of which stood Robert Barclay, William Penn, George Whitehead and others, proclaimed to all-even to the hunted Jew and proscribed Mahometan-the novel doctrine of universal toleration, and united with this sentiment a great variety of opinions, deemed subversive of existing dogmas, and threatening the privileged orders of the Church - and State of England.
In order to reduce some of these principles to practice, Penn ac- cepted in 1681 a Charter of Pennsylvania from Charles II. Thither he repaired in the succeeding year with such companions and fol- lowers, as animated by the hope of improving their decayed fortunes, or induced by the adventurous spirit of change, or anxious to enjoy their religious tenets freed from the oppressive or uplifted hand of secu- lar authority, were willing to encounter the austerities of a residence in the new and remote regions of the west. Here the liberal princi- ples of the founder were to stand the trial of experiment. The prob- lem was to be solved, whether Government, exposed to the billows and inundations of the democratic element, and subjected to the dan- gers of unfettered religious opinion, could subsist without the nutri- ment of a hierarchy, without the distinction of caste, and without the aid of privilege.
As all religious professors were equally entitled to protection by the Great Law of 1682, multitudes flocked to the new settlement. But notwithstanding the freedom which was allowed to discussion and conduct, and the constant influx of strangers from England and the neighbouring colonies, it does not appear that religious controversy engaged much of the colonial mind, or that with the exception of the Keithian schism, diversities of sentiment estranged the affections or excited the passions of the people. The minds of the settlers, thus
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left free to think and act without the apprehension of restraint, or the dread of a superior, directed their powers fearlessly to the question of government, to the melioration of their physical state, and to the im- provement of their moral and intellectual condition.
- nec verba minacia fixo Ære legebantur; nec supplex turba timebat Judicis ora sui .- Ov. MET.
The early emigrants included in their number men of good educa- tions and high endowments. Penn himself was a scholar and a writer ; his mind was of a sagacious and original order, and enriched with various and profound knowledge. Thomas and David Loyd, Makin, Pastorius, Kelpius, Hamilton, Logan, Norris, Brooke, Keith, and many others who could be named, were men of considerable classical attainments. It is enough to say, that the mathematics and ancient languages were taught in the Friends' Public School; that the genius, scenery and peculiarities of the province were soon celebrated in Latin verse; and that the Roman and French tongues were, on one occasion at least, resorted to as the mediums of intercourse between . the English and German emigrants.
A printing press was in operation in Philadelphia, so early as the year 1686. This was only four years after the settlement by Penn, while the forests were standing in primeval wildness around the colo- nists, and before huts were substituted for the caves which first shel- tered them from the inclemencies of winter. In all the other colonies, this engine of mind was postponed till the asperities of a new country were subdued by longer cultivation, or until physical ease gave more leisure to seek for mental conveniences. In Pennsylvania, the cause of education and the diffusion of knowledge by means of printing,
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were cotemporary with the landing. The following year (1687) is signalized by the printing of an almanack. This performance was from the printing house of Bradford, and is remarkable as one of the first emanations of the colonial press. In conformity with a provi- sion in the Frame of the Government, a school was opened in the next year after the landing (1683), and in six years afterwards was estab- . lished a Friends' Public School, where the poor were taught gratis, and sound literary and scientific learning was open to all. The pre- amble to the charter, which was granted to this seminary in 1701, shows the high aims of the colonists with respect to mental culture. It recites that the prosperity and welfare of a people depend mainly upon the good education of youth, and that the qualifications for public and private usefulness are chiefly derived from learning to read and write, and from "the learning of languages and useful arts and sciences, suitable to their sex, age and degree," &c.
James Logan accompanied the proprietary on his second visit to the colony, in 1699. His valuable treatises in Latin, and his English translation of Cicero's little work, De Senectute, are well known. These have given to posterity additional evidence, if any were wanting, of his devotion to literature and science. With great libe- rality, he bequeathed the books known as the Loganian department of the Philadelphia Library to the city, "for the advancement and faci- litating," as he observes, "of classical learning." He was fifty years in forming this library, which numbered nearly four thousand vo- lumes at his death. It included one hundred folio volumes, in Greek, mostly with versions. The Roman classics were among them, " with- out," he says, "an exception." All the Greek mathematicians, Ar- chimedes, Euclid, Ptolemy, &c., had a place, besides a great number of modern mathematicians. In addition to standard works of en-
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during value, many rare and curious volumes are to be found in this collection, which, at the present time at least, to use his own expres- sion, " neither prayers nor price could purchase."
In the year 1719, the first newspaper was published in the colony of Pennsylvania, under the title, "The American Mercury." The Boston News Letter, undertaken and published in the year 1704, at Boston, by John Campbell, a Scotchman, claims the undeniable dis- tinction of being the first newspaper which appeared in either of the North American colonies. Though Pennsylvania, which is half a century younger than Massachusetts, must yield this honour to her elder sister, yet the priority is a period of only fifteen years, and at Philadelphia was published the first daily newspaper which appeared on the continent.
Four years after the commencement of "The American Mercury," Franklin appeared, a poor and friendless boy of seventeen, in posses- sion of a trade about half taught, in the streets of Philadelphia. Be- fore I refer to the history of this remarkable man, or the effects which his presence and exertions produced upon our institutions, it may be proper to show how circumstances contributed to his success.
We have seen that the leading minds of the first settlers were scholars ; that the means of common and scholastic education were amply provided; and that zeal and enterprise in the cause of learning were exhibited in the early establishment of a printing press, and in a variety of literary performances. It remains to be shown, that the principles of the colonial policy had concurred with these causes, in diffusing a self respect and spirit of generous rivalry among those classes of society, to which in other countries they were strangers.
Among the beneficial influences which the Society of Friends ex- erted upon the infant colony from its establishment, were the recog-
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nition of usefulness in occupations, simplicity in living, and equality in classes. As these principles were engrafted in the maxims of their religious profession, they taught that each was to be deduced as a co- rollary from the humility of the Christian character. The callings of men however humble or laborious, were not permitted to detract from their social standing; and frugality in living and simplicity in furniture and dress were enjoined on all their members, without refer- ence to their pecuniary means of indulgence, or their taste for luxury or expense. Those arts which merely embellish life, and add to our enjoyments in the gratification of the senses, were decried. Nothing was deemed meritorious, or voted to be respectable, but that which could be made subservient to the great purposes of utility or practical convenience.
They taught that as trades and manual labour were useful, as- siduity in their prosecution was honourable. William Penn recom- mended trades to his children. Other leading Friends, whose ances- tors, claiming for the most part a cavalier descent and belonging to the best classes of English society, adopted his sentiments, and set the example of bringing up their children to some useful or handi- craft employment.
The necessities of a new country gave force to these suggestions. The effect of such views upon a society, in which existed no titular ranks, except those which must result from the inevitable subordina- tions of social and political life, was pervading. The principle had its origin in religious faith, and that only, without looking to political consequences. While this principle left the claim of conventional honour untouched, it raised to respectability a class of men, whose ignorance and occupations had before consigned them to the evils of neglect and a chilling sense of inferiority. Birth and employment
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came to be disregarded in the estimate of personal character. How- ever humble and depressed these might have been esteemed else- where, their humility presented no obstacle in Pennsylvania to ad- vancement and consideration. Perhaps no event in history has tend- ed so much to the real elevation of the working classes, as the reli- gious maxims and social scheme of Penn and his companions, in the Province of Pennsylvania.
All this had the salutary effect of bringing the different classes of society into closer union. The social manners of mechanics, con- demned in England to isolation, were improved; and their prevailing sympathies and impulses softened and enlarged. They were soon taught to feel the advantages of scientific knowledge to the manual arts, and to see the connexion subsisting between them. The mecha- nic of Pennsylvania thus became a different sort of person from the mechanic of other countries. Many of her practical farmers and unambitious tradesmen were the offspring of refined and educated parents, who, in training the hands of their children to labour, did not forget the cultivation of their minds, nor the improvement of their religious and moral faculties.
This preference for trades in the colony, either with or without some other employment, continued until after the middle of the last century. The placid surface of the social stream then became disturb- ed in the tumults of the revolution, and in the upheavings caused by war, the filth and deposits of the current, whose natural resting place was the bottom, sometimes mounted to the top. It was thus that social as well as political life underwent a change.
Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem. EN.
In the excitements of a momentous contest, in the more enlarged views which its successful issue presented, in the rivalry and compe-
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titions for political office, and in the diffusion of more luxurious tastes and habits, the primitive ideas of devotion to practical husbandry and the mechanic arts, gave place to the engagements of commerce, and thence to the more ambitious and ornamental pursuits of life. But the principle, in its native integrity, was preserved, and is still exem- plified by many members of the religious sect in which it originated. -
In connexion with the ideas of frugality, simplicity and utility in- culcated by the first colonists, it must not be forgotten that they were equally diligent in cultivating the benevolent principles of man, which they sought to awaken by private opinion and to nurse by the stimulus of keeping them in constant exercise. The value of physical means, appliances and instruments in the government of the world, was de- preciated; the animal instincts and propensities were to be subdued, if not extinguished. In pursuance of this scheme, they denounced war and fighting: they condemned the severity of the lash and other modes of physical torture, in the punishment of offenders; and de- claimed against capital inflictions. Instead of these, they set about mitigating the rigour of the penal code; jails were reformed and me- liorated, and charities founded for the poor and unfortunate.
The system of African slavery found no support, and as practised, no sympathy nor encouragement from William Penn ;* and his breth- ren of the province, after long continued and ineffectual remonstrance, finally determined, in the early part of the eighteenth century, to ex- clude from religious fellowship such of their members as were con- cerned in the traffic. Pennsylvania owes to her Quaker colonists,- especially to her founder,-to Southeby, Sandiford and Lay,-to Eli- sha Tyson, Anthony Benezet, and John Woolman,-the worthy dis- tinction of setting an example to the other states of the Union, of so modifying her system of domestic servitude as to bring about, in a * Vide Appendix, page 61.
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few years, its gradual but final extinction. This memorable event took place in the year 1780.
One of the leading motives of Penn in accepting a Charter for his Province, was the civilization of the Indians. The Treaty of per- petual friendship, which unarmed, he concluded with their aged sachems and distinguished warriors, amid the wild sublimity of their primeval forests on the Delaware, remained unbroken for near half a century. During that period the virgin soil was unstained by a drop of Indian or European blood. The white and the red man, alike anxious to cement their union by the offices of mutual kind- ness, strove to become the benefactor of each other. But when the influence of Penn and his immediate companions was removed by death, the benignity of their councils and the beautiful lesson of their lives, were, for a time, forgotten. The demons of violence and wrong entered upon the ministering angels of peace and justice, and took possession of their sanctuary. The Indian, trampled upon, outraged and oppressed, was obliged to fly from a country whose every cliff, dell and mountain was interwoven with his affections by the endear- ing recollections of his childhood, by the mouldering bones of his kindred, by the consecrated ashes of his forefathers. But the light of that spirit which shone so brightly in the first age, though under a temporary eclipse, was still in the firmament. It again emerged from the shadows and clouds which obscured it, and ever after blest the land with its heaven-descended radiance. On the banks of the Susquehanna the successors of the same race of colonists who made the great Treaty, are still engaged in training to civilized life the de- scendants of the very tribes with whom that Treaty was formed; and -thanks to the seeds which were sown in the spring-time of her
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history,-Pennsylvania herself never fails, at the present day, to thrill throughout her broad confines at the story of Indian wrongs.
Whatever may now be thought of some of the theories advanced by the Quaker puritans of that day, it must be admitted that ideas growing out of reflections upon our moral being, and based upon the improvable capacities of our moral nature, could only spring from minds enlarged by study and refined by general cultivation. It is to these causes we owe the number and variety of those charitable foun- dations for which Pennsylvania is so justly distinguished, as well as the honour of precedence, awarded to her, in the race of benevolent enterprise, in this country. To these we are indebted for the cele- brity she has long enjoyed for her mild punishment of offenders, and the latest improvement of the penitentiary system.
$ It is not surprising therefore that Franklin, on his arrival in Pennsylvania, should find apprentices whose aspirations were equal- ly generous with his own. When he founded with characteristic sagacity that remarkable union, the Junto of 1727, those who sym- pathised in his project were mostly mechanics, and brought up in the same sphere of life with himself. The members of the association were to be confined to twelve in number, but according to Franklin's account, the original number of those who were actually enrolled, was eleven. Of these, Thomas Godfrey was a glazier, William Par- sons, a shoemaker, William Maugridge, a joiner, and Hugh Meredith and Stephen Potts " were bred to country work;" but at that time, the former was engaged "to work at the press," and Potts was at bookbinding. Of the other five, Joseph Breintnall was "a copier of deeds for scriveners;" Nicholas Scull was a surveyor; George Webb is described as " an Oxford scholar," but his time, for four years, had been purchased by Keimer, the printer; William Coleman was
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then a merchant's clerk, and Robert Grace was a young gentleman of some fortune. These, with Franklin himself, the author of the so- ciety, who had been struggling with penury as a journeyman, but who now was a master printer, comprised the company. The promiscu- ous association of different classes, as displayed in the occupations of the members,-classes, which, in Europe, had seldom come into con- tact with each other,-cannot escape notice. No doubt the social fusion which it evidences, was promoted by the commanding intellect of the man who planned the enterprise; but more certainly may be ascribed to the amalgamating properties of other and antecedent ele- ments. The notion of transmitted and hereditary virtue, however we may condemn it as absurd and unphilosophical, cannot be over- come by suggestion, or obliterated in a few years. In Pennsylvania, the original structure of the social state had been placed upon new foundations, and leaned for its support upon reason and principle, not upon the fallacies and delusions of prejudice or the maxims and examples of antiquity.
The members of the original Junto were ingenious men, whom the love of knowledge had assembled, and whom the most generous aspi- rations cemented together. I will not repeat what is so generally known respecting their characters and attainments ; as the delightful autobiography of Franklin himself, who has characterized each, and the volumes of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, furnish very copious information.
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From the ingredients of the Junto, as well as from the contents of the Logan library, it is evident that light literature and graceful verses did not absorb the mind of the province. The satire of Young against a pursuit of the muses had appeared, and though it was caustic enough for so poetical a temperament, it could not eradi-
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cate a taste already formed. Mr. J. F. Fisher has shown that many of the colonists cultivated the muses with very tolerable success. But the tendency of the colonial mind was to useful acquisitions in science. This arose from the convictions of our ancestors, already referred to, that the elegant and ornamental arts were worthy of little encouragement and care. Education was too generally disseminated to permit the extinction of a classical taste; but though versifiers oc- casionally appeared, and a love of light literature was widely diffused, yet the energies of the youthful province were reserved for pursuits more congenial with practical exigencies and the predominant feel- ings of the country.
We have seen that the Junto was formed in the year 1727. In the following year, Makin wrote his Latin poem, entitled, " Enco- mium Pennsylvania," to which succeeded, in the year 1729, his " Descriptio Pennsylvania." These verses are not without merit as metrical compositions, and show at least that the author had studied the classical productions of Rome, and understood the structure and prosody of the Latin tongue. The Library Company of Philadelphia was started two years after, in 1731, and had its origin, under the auspices of Franklin, in the desire of the Junto to have a permanent collection of books for the benefit of its members. This Library, it may be observed in passing, though now unequal to the literary wants of Philadelphia, has risen to an importance far exceeding in number and value any other bibliothecal repository in the United States. It certainly argued a diffusive zeal for knowledge, that in an infant and sparsely populated colony, fifty original subscribers, and they "mostly among young tradesmen," could be obtained for such an enterprise, with the expectation that an annual contribution would be required for the space of half a century. In 1741 was attempted
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a Magazine, which is the first effort in any of the colonies to establish a literary journal. In the following year another newspaper was established in Philadelphia. About this time it was that James Lo- gan published at Leyden several works in Latin on different branches of science, and in the province his English translation of Cicero on Old Age; that Thomas Godfrey, the author of the quadrant, was prosecuting his ingenious and scientific labours; and that John Bar- tram, whom Linnæus justly pronounced the greatest natural botanist in the world, was earning honour from his sovereign, and fame from the learned societies of Europe. These and kindred occurrences pre- pared the way for further events. In the year 1743 an Academy was suggested, which grew into a great literary and medical univer- sity, whose well earned and unrivalled eminence has long been a source of cherished and honourable pride to Pennsylvania; and the same year witnessed the formation of this Society, whose centennary we have just celebrated.
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