USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Philadelphia > A discourse pronounced on the inauguration of the new hall, March 11, 1872, of the Historical society of Pennsylvania, No. 820 Spruce street, Philadelphia > Part 2
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Other commonwealths and distant countries glory in their schools. How far were any in advance of Pennsylvania ? Let our provincial records tell. They show us* that
" At a council held in this city, the 26th of the 10th month, 1683, the governor and provincial council having taken into their serious consideration the great necessity that there is for a schoolmaster for the instruction and sober education of youth in the town of Philadelphia, sent for Enoch Flower, an inhabit- ant of said town, who for twenty years past hath been exercised in that care and employment in England; to whom having communicated their mind he embraced it upon the following terms :
To learn to read English,
4s. by the quarter. 6s.
" and write, .
write, and cast accounts, 8s.
For boarding a scholar ; that is to say, diet, wash-
ing, lodging, and schooling, . £10 for one whole year.
Has the public-school system of any day ever equalled what this province proposed and what the schoolmaster of 1683 " embraced"-boarding the scholar, that is to say, diet, washing, lodging, and schooling by the whole year !
Nor was the effort of our province directed to the estab- lishment of schools for the humbler branches of education, only; for reading, writing, and casting of accounts. In the very foundation of our city, in the first moments that they
* 1 Minutes of the Provincial Council, p. 36.
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came here, our ancestors were engaged with the whole sub- ject of education. On the 17th of the 11th month, 1683,* we find it
"Proposed, that care be taken about the learning and in- struction of youth, to wit, A SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES."
Our ancestors deemed it impossible, as you perceive, to separate, without an injury to both, the humbler sorts of education from the higher and more elegant branches of knowledge. In their estimation, " the two were as mutually dependent-as necessary. to each other's existence and pros- perity-as the ocean and the streams which feed it; the ocean which supplies the quickening principle of the streams; the streams which in turn pour forth their united tribute to the common reservoir." They felt that " schools of arts and sciences"-colleges and universities-" furnish and propagate the seeds of knowledge for common schools, and that these, in turn, transfer their more thrifty plants to the more highly cultivated gardens."t
At the time when these laws were proposed, A.D. 1683, there was scarcely a house built beyond our river-line, and along that line but few which were not of the humblest order. So far was Pennsylvania in advance of most of the provinces around it !
Nor was the civility of our province confined to efforts in this direction. The difficult subject of finance-the power of that system which we call the credit system-a system
* 1 Minutes of the Provincial Council, 38.
¡ See the speech of Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, delivered in the House of Representatives, at Harrisburg, March 10th, 1838, in favor of a bill to establish a School of Arts in the city of Philadelphia and to endow the colleges and academies of Pennsylvania.
It is worth noting that the School of Arts and Sciences "proposed in Philadelphia " in 1683, was actually established. Gabriel Thomas, who lived in this country about fifteen years, states in his " Historicall Account of Pennsylvania," &c., printed in 1698, that in Philadelphia "are several good schools of learning for youth, in order to the attainment of arts and sciences, as also reading, writing, &c." What exactly the "arts and sci- ences" were, is not now so easily ascertained. The "decorative " ones, as we term them, could not largely, one would say, have prevailed in a colony of Friends. The useful sort were apparently well cultivated.
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deemed one of our own times chiefly-had already unfolded itself to their comprehensive minds. On the 7th of the 12th month, 1688-9, at "a council in the Council Room," Gov- ernor Blackwell presiding, the provincial minutes give us this curious record :*
"The petition of Robert Turner, John Tissic, Thomas Budd, Robert Ewer, Samuel Carpenter, and John Fuller, was read, setting forth their design of setting up a BANK FOR MONEY; and requesting encouragement from the governor and council for their proceeding therein.
" The governor acquainted them that some things of that nature had been proposed and dedicated to the proprietort by himself, out of New England, to which he believed that he should receive his answer by the first shipping hither out of England. Yet withall acquainting them that he did know no reason why they might not give their personal bills to such as would take them as money, to pass, as merchants usually did, bills of exchange."
Here we see apparently a number of men-the "first merchants" of that day-applying to the governor and council-the legislature, I suppose, of the time-for encour- agement from it, in a design which they had of setting up a bank for money; that is to say, applying for a bank charter.t
It is noteworthy, too, that Governor Blackwell seems to have anticipated the day of " chemicals" and other arts of forgers, for in giving the petitioners his sanction to their scheme, he adds that
" It might be suspected that such as usually clipped or coined money would be apt to counterfeit their bills, unless more than . ordinary care were taken to prevent it."§
* 1 Minutes of the Provincial Council, 193.
+ Mr. Penn, of course. Governor Blackwell was his deputy.
+ It looks a little as if these petitioners for a bank had had some slight design, kept in latency perhaps, to make the new bills a " legal tender." It will be observed, at least, that Governor Blackwell informs them that he saw no reason " why they might not give their personal bills to such as would take them as money, to pass, as merchants usually did bills of ex- change."
¿ Here, again, we see the governor distinguishing sharply between " money" and "bills." The editor of the excellent " money articles " of the Ledger owes his memory a tribute.
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" Friends," too, though we chiefly were,-giving to him who would take our coat our cloak also, and with him who would compel us to go a mile, going twain,-it is yet re- markable how well some of our early legislators understood the limitations under which " the School of the Mount" doubtless meant to teach its rules. Seeking peace and ensu- ing it, they still knew full well that preparedness for war, was no bad means to secure the blessed end. In 1688, when the abdication of James II, and the accession of the house of Orange, threatened to involve England in a war with France, our colony at once bethought itself how best it should in- spire the bosom of King Louis with Christian dispositions in case he thought of coming here. The opinion of William Markham, how best to do it,-a cousin of Mr. Penn, and at one time his lieutenant here,-remains of record:
" My opinion is that we ought to have our arms as well fixed in time of peace as war. . . . And whether war be come or not, I always keep my own arms prepared."
A sage sentiment! never better expressed by any one in other provinces, and which Washington himself did but improve and point in his memorable apothegms of 1793, when the same France, impious and revolutionary, was involving the earth in war and making nations quake with fear :
" If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it. If we desire to secure peace, it must be known that we are, at' all times, ready for war."
But I cannot dwell upon these very early times. It is the misfortune of Pennsylvania that her provincial history has never yet been written. Some who have tried to tell it, have had no sufficient knowledge, and others have wanted that genius and taste which was essential for their office, and without which no knowledge of fact will ever make a his- torical work attractive. Thus to most who study them, our pre-revolutionary annals are a dreary waste, diversified chiefly by quarrels between our governors and their as- semblies and by the feuds of provincial parties; one side of
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them no better sometimes than a provincial faction. Yet beneath all these there lies, I apprehend, a better history ; one which, if written with a comprehensive view and a phil- osophie spirit-with remembrance that " history is a high name and imports productions of a high order" *__ would be to Pennsylvanians a subject both of instruction and pride.
The most impressive account that we have of old Phila- delphia and our province comes to us in passing notices from the other side of the Atlantic. In that remarkable work to which I have already alluded, published in 1761, and entitled " An Account of the European Settlements in America "- a work which, if not wholly from the peu of Mr. Burke, we have reason to believe was largely put together from records that were-nothing in the whole survey of the British Prov- inces seems to have seized his attention so vividly as our own city and our own province. Thus he writes of Phila- delphia : +
" There are in this city a great number of very wealthy mer- chants, which is no ways surprising when one considers the great trade which it carries on with the English, French, Span- ish, and Dutch colonies in America ; with the Azores, the Cana- ries, and the Madeira Islands; with Great Britain and Ireland, with Spain, Portugal, and Holland, and the great profits which are made in many branches of this commerce. Beside the quantity of all kinds of the produce of this province which is brought down the rivers Delaware and Schuylkill . . . the Dutch employ between eight and nine thousand wagons, drawn leach by four horses, in bringing the produce of their farms to this market. In the year 1749, 303 vessels entered inwards at this port and 291 cleared outwards."
Such was this city one hundred and eleven or more years ago. Describing our province, he says :
"There is no part of British America in a more growing con- dition. In some years more people have transported themselves into Pennsylvania than into all the other settlements together.
* Daniel Webster, Address before the New York Historical Society, Feb- ruary 23d, 1852, p. 5.
+ Burke's Works, Boston ed., 1839, vol. ix, p. 349.
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In 1729, 6208 persons came to settle here, as passengers or ser- vants, four-fifths of whom, at least, were from Ireland. In short, this province has increased so greatly from the time of its first establishment that whereas lands were given by Mr. Penn, at the rate of £20 for 1000 acres, reserving only a shilling for every hundred acres for quit-rent, and this in some of the best situated parts of the province ; yet now (A.D. 1761), at a great distance from navigation, land is granted at £12 the 100 acres, and a quit-rent of four shillings reserved. And the land which is near Philadelphia rents for 20 shillings the acre. In many places, and at a distance of several miles from that city, land sells for twenty years' purchase."
And at a later date (A.D. 1774) in that comparative view of this country, which he gives us in his speech upon " Con- ciliation with America," when he describes the great and growing population of the Colonies, the spirit with which our people pursued agriculture, and the wealth which we had drawn from the fisheries-the province of Pennsylvania it is which has the foreground of the picture .* After his splendid apostrophe to Lord Bathurst, letting fall the cur- tain on that vision and resuming his comparative view of the increasing wealth of the Colonies at different dates, he says :
"I will point out to your attention a particular instance yet, in the single province of Pennsylvania. In the year 1704 that province called for £11,459 in value of your commodities, native and foreign. This was the whole. What did it demand in 1772? Why, nearly fifty times as much ; for in that year the export to Pennsylvania was £507,909; nearly equal to the ex- port trade of all the Colonies together in the first period."
Surely a city and a colony which carried on such a com- merce, which increased thus in population and in wealth, was great and flourishing, and, on the whole, could not have been unwisely governed. Prior to 1765 there were, indeed, it would seem, no great complaints.
The very legislation under which we live-not a little of it going back as far as the years 1704, 1705, &c .- some of it
* Burke's Works, Boston ed., 1839, vol. ii, p. 28.
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remaining in statutes dated specifically with those years, and more of it incorporated into other acts of recent times- this very legislation, I say, declares to us that superior genius must have presided in some of our Colonial Assem- blies. The men who have been able, in the infancy of states, so to legislate as to govern them in centuries after, when they have become populous and mighty, have been but few; hardly more than have written epic poems, and in genius, perhaps, not much inferior.
But why need I quote the history and speeches and legis- lation of a century and more ago? We need but to look about us to see what our old city and our old colony was in men and in institutions.
There stands okl Christ Church in Second Street ; finished perhaps in 1744-injured much by the work of 1836 *- but still one of the most imposing and beautiful ecclesiastical erections of our city; whose well-tuned chime, put there long anterior to the days of the Revolution, remained with- out any rival in other cities till within more recent days, and remains perhaps without successful rival now; whose corporation along with a colonial sister, maintains, as an adjunct and dependence, a great retreat for the aged poor who by their sex have been least able to make provision for themselves; this hospital, like the churches, founded far back in colonial times.t 1
There, in Fifth Street, stands our Philadelphia Library, begun in 1731, chartered in 1742, whose early by-laws, much in advance of ideas which we learned in England, give to "any civil gentleman" the privilege to read and study there; whose earlier collections show that the excellent spirit which governs it now is but the same spirit which governed and founded it in colonial times, and which may well be invoked as a guiding one for like institutions every-
* The old high, square pews were torn down, in the year named, and the paved aisles, with many ancient tombstones, covered over with wood floors. + Christ Church Hospital, belonging to " the united churches of Christ Church and St. Peter's," which were chartered by the Penns in 1765. The Hospital was founded A.D. 1772, by John Kearsley, M. D., but enriched by Joseph Dobbins, Esq. It is west of the Park.
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where and always; the spirit which, seeking to diffuse the influence of the collection through every grade of society, brings together for this common use " works that illustrate the truths and exhibit the progress of science, that have won, or promise to win, for themselves the rank of stand- ards in letters ; a spirit which, not systematically excluding lighter and more graceful forms of literature, if obnoxious to no moral objection, has yet given preference to those graver and more costly productions which few can afford to purchase, but which many should feel bound to read; a spirit which, above all, remembers that a great public library is no fit receptacle for ephemeral literature; no dwelling- place for the exaggerated descriptions of modern fiction which pervert the taste, and its varnished impurities which destroy morals."
There stand-now laying yet new and more broad founda- tions for usefulness-the old College, Academy, and Charity Schools of Philadelphia, chartered in 1755, the glory of William Smith, D.D .; which, notwithstanding the violence of party in revolutionary times,-that gave to them their present name of University of Pennsylvania, but added noth- ing to their usefulness,-continue to this day to diffuse the blessings which they were founded to dispense.
There stands in Fourth Street, with its date of 1752, in strength that no devastating fires, nor any larums of 'change have ever touched, or so much as brought to question, the first fire insurance company founded on this continent,* and little to the rearward of such companies anywhere; a company which I think has scarcely ever disputed a loss, and whose original, colonial, and still abiding principle of organization-one for mutual protection alone, instead of one for profit to stockholders besides-recent events, I should think, would convince every one whose own perceptions or reflections had not satisfied him of it already-was the only principle for fire insurance, or indeed for insurances of any kind.t
* The Philadelphia Contributionship for Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire; commonly known from its badge as the Hand in Hand.
¡ The speaker had reference to the awful fire of Chicago on the Sth, 9th,
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Bearing a date of but seven years later, A.D. 1759, there still exists, with its proprietary charter, the first successful life insurance company ever established on this continent ;* one which has seen many like institutions rise and fall at home and abroad, but which, having for one hundred and twelve years been diffusing comfort to the families of those pious men who have looked to it for earthly relief, remains at this day in a strength greater than it ever possessed before; a company, like the other, founded on the idea of colonial times, that such institutions should rest on the "mutual " principle, and not oppose an interest to the very one which they profess and are bound to protect.
There remains, too, in the " still air" congenial to its pursuits-overlooking the ancient State House, in the edi- fice where it claims prescriptive rights -the American Philosophical Society, chartered by the Penns in 1769, the great attainments and discoveries of whose members, in higher science, made the city of Philadelphia honored over every land in Europe, when of any other American city scarec even the name was known. What other of " the old thirteen " can present such names in the history of physical science as Bartram, and Rittenhouse, and Kinnersley, and Godfrey, and Franklin ? names that embrace profound dis- coveries in botany, mathematics, astronomy, electricity, mechanics, mensuration, and many kindred sciences. What other legislatures than the legislature of our province gave at the early day of 1769, and when our provincial means were but limited, £200 that philosophers might observe the transit of Venus in that day; or in 1771 rewarded the
and 10th of October, 1871, when very many other insurance companies were severely crippled, and more than one made bankrupt wholly.
* The Corporation for the Relief of Poor and Distressed Presbyterian Ministers, and of the Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Pres- byterian Ministers. A prior Life Insurance Company, as we may fairly call it, had been established in Virginia in 1754, by the clergy of the Church of England, as we now know by Dr. Perry's invaluable labors. But it does not, I think, survive to this day. See the Historical Collections relating to the American Colonial Church, edited by the Rev. William Stevens Perry, D.D. Vol. 1 (Virginia), p. 426.
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constructor of an Orrery with a still greater sum, as a testi- mony of its sense of the abilities which he had brought to construct a work which should display to its people the glories of the solar system, and of the great Original whose power it all proclaims .*
There in its ancient grounds, quiet and sequestered, f stands the Carpenters' Hall, passed daily, I suppose, by twenty thousand people, thought of by few, entered, per- haps, by none; the Hall of our old Society of House Car- penters, fit counterpart, in the mechanic arts, of what " The . Junto," nearly contemporaneous with it, was in philosophy, morality, and politics .¿ The Junto leaves us no external monument to bear its name. The carpenters may point still to an honored one. Organized in 1724, this single guild erected an edifice sufficiently large and sufficiently commodious to have been selected in 1774 for its sessions by one of the most august bodies that ever assembled upon earth-the first Provincial Congress of America-that Con- gress, the first prayer in which John Adams so eloquently describes; § and where the eloquence of Patrick Henry moved the nation. This was its extraordinary glory. But I speak not of that. It is as a record of the society of our early build- ers that I here advert to it; as an illustration of the integrity, the discipline, the skill, and the success which attended our early mechanic arts. Visit this venerable place. Read its constitution and rules, and you will comprehend all that I
* The Provincial Assembly of Pennsylvania in 1768-9 appropriated £100 sterling to purchase a reflecting telescope to enable the Philosophical So- ciety to observe this transit, and shortly afterwards another £100 to build the requisite observatories. In 1775 it made an appropriation of £300 to Dr. Rittenhouse, " as a testimony of the high sense which the house enter- tains of his mathematical genius and abilities in constructing his Orrery." See Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. i, p. 160.
t Back from the south side of Chestnut, below Fourth.
# A society of young men, formed in Philadelphia about 1727, for mutual improvement, and described very interestingly by Dr. Franklin in his autobiography. Godfrey was one of its members. Franklin's Works, Sparks's ed. Boston, 1840, vol. i, p. 82.
¿ In a letter to his wife. Works of John Adams, vol. ii, p. 368-9.
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mean to speak of. Our ancient dwellings have many of them disappeared. Robert Turner's, and "Edward Shippey's," and "Sam Carpenter's" big houses, described by Mr. Watson, have gone, ages ago. Anthony Duche's, Edward Pe- nington's, and Charles Willing's more lately .* But enough remain if we will visit them. They still stand in Front Street, in Second Street, in Third, and in the lower parts · of Pine. Look at their imposing " dormers," their elaborate cornices, their stately doorways! Enter them ! Telling an instructive story of those who built them, what yet better one do they not then tell of those who dwelt there ? Look . then, in that light, at these ancient domestic edifices ! What a history do they give of old Philadelphia! Why do we never visit them ? Mute chroniclers though they be, they present, better than a score of books, domestic life and char- acter among our provincial gentry. Deserted and degraded though they are, it requires little imagination to restore, re- people, and refurnish them. Look at their broad fronts, their spacious halls, their numerous apartments, both large and small; the rich carvings, the elaborate wainscots, the stairways so easy of ascent, the provision everywhere for every domestic person and every domestic thing; the open chimney, where blazed from fire and wood the cheerful flame, that after years of extinguishment now again, through darkly, furnace-heated houses, gas and iron counterfeit- and counterfeit in vain. Look at the space around, once the well-kept garden, where children played, filled with flowers and fruits, and diffusing to the overlooking mansion light, and cheerfulness, and health. When you have taken in all this, but not till then, you see before you " the very wealthy merchants," of whom Mr. Burke was speaking in one of those extracts which I have read to you ;; the men who carried on that " great trade " with the English, French,
* Of this last, built in 1745 and surviving till 1856, at the southwest corner of Third Street and Willing's Alley (a site now occupied by the offices of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company), there is a good account in Dr. Gris- wold's Republican Court, 2d edition, p. 303.
+ Supra, p. 16.
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Spanish, and Dutch colonies; with the Azores, the Canaries, and the Madeira Islands; with Great Britain and Ireland ; with Spain, Portugal, and Holland; and who, from much of it, derived "great profits." These were their homes, and the homes of their children. They tell that story truly. But they tell a better one as well-a story such as no other provincial city of America ever told so fully. They tell us of families, men and women both, who sought to enjoy life, not to dissipate it; who found pleasure in that which is within, rather than in that which is without; who lived for . their own approval, more than for the eyes of others; and who, in providing for their own comfort, provided for the comfort of their servants also.
I know not how it is. The Philadelphian who visits Italy shall wend his way through filthy passes, in hunting out the abandoned homes of the Vitelli and Orsini. He shall mire himself in the filth of the Ghetto to gaze upon the ancient palace of the Cenci; cursed, it seems, of heaven, and aban- doned. to creatures as disgusting as it is easy to think that human beings ever can become. Hewill climb its dangerous stairways, and survey its dilapidated chambers. He will point with pathetic gesture at its faded frescoes and departing gold. The same Philadelphian will pass by without a thought the homes of his own ancestors, fine and venerable structures ; not a few of them homes of men who were the founders of a republic-blessed with gifts of wealth, and place, and for- tune-all that tends to make of men a natural nobility; men as virtuous, it may be hoped, as the Orsini or Vitelli; and of women, who if we are to judge by their descendants of their own sex here before us now, this Society I doubt not, were it put this moment to a vote, would declare by acclama- tion, were as fair as even Beatrice of the Cenci.
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