Author 
 
 Title 
 
 Imprint 
 
 19—47372-3 OPO 
 
A U D li E S S 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 HISTOEICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 
 
 28th January, 1848. 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OF OPENING THE HALL IN 
 THE ATHEJSr.EUM. 
 
 WILLIAM B. REED. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 C. SHERMAN, PRINTER. 
 
 19 ST. JAArES S'l'RKKT. 
 
 1848. 
 
 W\3.aA v. 
 
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 X'vwv Ow- < •i'X C/4 V t 
 
 
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Hall of the Historical Society of Pexnsylvania. 
 February 14, 1848. 
 Sir, 
 
 I have the honour to communicate the following resolution, passed 
 at a meeting of the Historical Society held this evening. 
 
 On motion of Doctor A. L. Elwyn, it was resolved, That the 
 thanks of the Society be presented to Mr. Reed, for his Address, de- 
 livered on the 28th ult., and that a copy be requested for publication. 
 
 I am, very respectfully, 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Edward Arsistrong, 
 
 Recording Secretary. 
 William B. Reed, Esquire. 
 
ADDRESS, 
 
 The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has desired 
 me to present a simple and precise exposition of its 
 design, success, and prospects. It is, and always has 
 been an unpretending Association, whose councils have 
 been secluded, and v^^hich has never, that I am aware 
 of, obtruded itself on public attention. It is neither 
 rich nor ambitious, and has one merit of honest po- 
 verty, it is, I believe, out of debt. There are very 
 many of our fellow-citizens who do not know of its ex- 
 istence, and no doubt some, whose only sentiment to- 
 wards us is kindred to contemptuous indifference. 
 
 For twenty-two years, a few gentlemen interested in 
 memories of the past, have been in the habit of monthly 
 association, and have co-operated to collect materials 
 and open sources of information, from which the his- 
 torian, by and by, will frame his narrative, and for 
 which he, at least, will thank us. 
 
 It is not my intention to tell the history of this In- 
 
stitution. Its career has been very noiseless and bar- 
 ren of incident. 
 
 The nineteen original constituents of the Society, 
 who signed the charter in 1826, were William Rawle, 
 Roberts Vaux, Joseph Hopkinson, Joseph Reed, Tho- 
 mas C. James, John Sergeant, Thomas I. Wharton, 
 Thomas H. White, Caspar Wistar, George W. Smith, 
 Gerard Ralston, William M. Walmsley, Daniel B. 
 Smith, William Rawle, Jr., Charles J. Ingersoll, Ed- 
 ward Settle, Thomas M. Pettit, B. H. Coates, and 
 William M. Meredith. Of these, the dead or the liv- 
 ing, it is unnecessary to say a word. 
 
 There is one individual, however, who is yet amongst 
 us, and to whom, unobtrusive as his career has been, 
 I have some delicacy in thus publicly referring ; 
 yet I will venture to do so, not for the purpose 
 of compliment, of which he would be very careless, 
 but because the cause of local history is under sub- 
 stantive obligations to him — greater far than to any 
 one amongst us. I mean Mr. Hazard, the Curator of 
 this Society and Editor of the Register of Pennsyl- 
 vania — a work which every one, who desires to learn 
 anything of the remote or recent history of the State, 
 knows to be invaluable, and which will always be a 
 monument of the author's singular industry and accu- 
 racy. No other state in this Union can boast of any- 
 thing like it. It is essential, as I have some shght 
 means of knowing, to the public man — to all who have 
 
occasion to learn anything of Pennsylvania or her 
 affairs. The time is not far distant, when Mr. 
 Hazard's great work will be appreciated, and full 
 justice be done to his modest labours. I am most 
 happy thus incidentally, and perhaps inappropri- 
 ately, to refer to one, of whom this Society should 
 be proud, but who never has, and I am sure never 
 will put forward any claim for public approval. In 
 days of obtrusive sciolism, it is pleasant to have a 
 chance of praising modest merit* 
 
 I have no other personal allusions to make. But 
 I have a few words to say, and they will be said in 
 a most desultory manner, (such, on this occasion, 
 being the wish of the Society and my own,) of our 
 local history — its interest and value — the necessity 
 of its study, and the aid which a Society like this, 
 properly administered, can render. 
 
 The duties of an Historical Society are not only the 
 collection, but the scrutiny of original materials. It 
 by no means follows, because a document is old that it 
 is curious or valuable ; and a Society ought to have 
 within itself the capacity of making the discrimination. 
 If it has not, the chance is, that it will very soon be- 
 come the receptacle of antique trash. In the collection 
 
 * Mr. Hazard is now engaged in the preparation of a new work of 
 " Pennsylvania Annals," beginning at the Swedish settlements and 
 coming down to a recent period. 
 
and preservation of materials, a society can do much 
 for which individual action is inadequate. There is 
 a class of materials which it is our especial duty 
 to preserve. I refer to public documents, and with- 
 in certain limits, newspapers. Let any one attempt 
 a minute historical investigation, and he will appre- 
 ciate this duty. Books of biography and general his- 
 tory may be procured by individuals, and are within 
 the compass of private libraries ; but vain would be the 
 attempt, and intolerable the burden of accumulation, 
 to comprise within any four walls of ordinary construc- 
 tion, the vast production, even of the official press of 
 the country or of the State. Yet it is well worth pre- 
 servation — the " ha'penny worth of bread in all this 
 sack" is essential to the student — and there should be 
 some depositary for everything in the form of a public 
 document, to which there may be easy access. That 
 depositary, an Historical Society can be, even better 
 than a General Circulating Library — though the de- 
 fect in this particular of libraries in other respects 
 complete, is much to be deplored. The City Library, 
 of which we are so justly proud, is rather a library for 
 distribution than reference, and will continue to be so, 
 so long as students are limited to the post-prandial, 
 twiliofht hours at which it is now accessible. No one 
 in Philadelphia is supposed to w^ant to study till he 
 eats his dinner. 
 
An Historical Society should be a sort of " Intelli- 
 gence Office" for manuscripts and other original mate- 
 rials. No one, who is curious in such matters, can be 
 expected to bestow, on a public institution, private col- 
 lections made with labour and expense ; but this So- 
 ciety ought at least to know where these collections are. 
 Besides, there are hundreds of interesting manuscript 
 memorials of the past, neglected or carelessly regarded 
 by their owners, that with proper effort on our part, 
 will here find refuge; and can be easily referred to 
 without the restraint which surrounds every private 
 curiosity collection. An Historical Society ought, I 
 repeat, to know where all such things are to be found, 
 so that when the stranger student comes hither on an 
 errand of investigation, we may render him the assis- 
 tance he desires. Having these objects in view some 
 years ago, in our days of restricted means and de- 
 pressed energies, a committee was appointed, in order 
 to ascertain what private papers of value were in exis- 
 tence in Philadelphia, as well as their condition and 
 chances of preservation. I am unable to say what was 
 done under this appointment. Probably, in the cold 
 and discouraging atmosphere, in which public neglect 
 has compelled us to pursue our labours, this resolution, 
 like many others, perished at its birth.* 
 
 * Autograph hunters, directory and ahiiaunc collectors — all who 
 indulge amiable and whimsical cui'iosity ought here to be ticketed 
 
10 
 
 This Society may be made a place of communion in 
 the special branch of literature for which it was in- 
 stituted — where those interested in such studies, may 
 be sure to find companions and fellow-students — where 
 the young man, who is tracing out some line of histo- 
 rical investigation that has attracted his fancy, may 
 find counsel and assistance from those who have more 
 maturely studied the same thing — whither the older 
 student may also come and gain from the active and 
 suggestive minds of younger men, ideas and details of 
 knowledge which have escaped him. Where all in- 
 terested in this pursuit may meet on the ^ame broad 
 platform, and freely, with a precise object in view, 
 think and talk together. In this hope, it has been the 
 steady effort of a majority of this Society, to popularise 
 it, and to invite rather than discourage accessions to 
 our ranks. If there be one thing more absurd in 
 this country than any other, it is the close borough- 
 ing of literary associations of liberal design and pro- 
 fessions — the employment by Science, or History, or 
 Philosophy of a corps of janitors to guard their doors 
 and watch the entrance — the enforcement of strict and 
 
 and reo-istered ; for many a time it happens lo the student, that a 
 signature, a date of time or place, the residence of a private citizen, 
 or the condition of the tide — or some such apparently insignificant 
 item — has an interest and value which the thankless reader little 
 imagines. No one, who has not laboured on these details, knows the 
 delight of lighting on mmute evidence thus discovered. 
 
11 
 
 arbitrary rules, generally having their origin in the 
 whims and prejudices of those who have themselves, 
 in all probability, crawled in under some bar of exclu- 
 sion. Such, I repeat, is not, and I trust never will be 
 the folly of this Society. It may be very humble in 
 its attractions, but it is not exclusive. The two most 
 effective associations in this city — the Franklin Insti- 
 tute and Academy of Natural Science — are before us 
 to attest the success of a liberal and inviting policy. 
 
 These generally are our objects — these our hopes 
 and wishes ; but all dependent for consummation on 
 the kindness and co-operation of our fellow-citizens 
 around us, at whose hands we do not ask pecuniary 
 patronage, but whom we merely ask to come amongst 
 us, and to encourage us by occasional and friendly asso- 
 ciation. We ask Pennsylvanians and Philadelphians 
 not to be ashamed of their ow^n history. If I were not 
 afraid, in these times when everything like enthu- 
 siasm, or pride of name, or patriotism is superseded or 
 thrust aside by some mercenary pursuit or absurd ro- 
 mantic medieval sentimentalism, I would ask them to 
 be, as well they may, proud of their own history. 
 
 Of the value of that history — I speak, too, especially 
 of Pennsylvania history — it is not my design to speak. 
 No one wdll seriously question it. The most imprac- 
 ticable student of rusty antiquity — he who wastes his 
 
12 
 
 literary leisure and scholar-like tastes on useless 
 things of useless times — who disturbs kind sympa- 
 thy with those about him by retrospects to days of 
 iron bigotry and fierce exaggeration — even he, while 
 he turns away from our simple annals, will admit their 
 value. All he says is, that they have no interest for 
 him. On the other hand, and with another class, do- 
 mestic cottons and woollens, domestic carpets, and 
 knives and forks, and bottles are encouraged, but few 
 think or care for domestic history. 
 
 And what, let me ask in all candour, is known of 
 that which is thus decried? Nothing — literally no- 
 thing. When a book of American history or biogra- 
 phy by some strange accident is read, the prevalent 
 sentiment is surprise that it is so interesting. I will 
 undertake to say, that there is not a human being, 
 within the sound of my voice, who does not know^ 
 more of Grecian, or Roman, or English, or Ecclesias- 
 tical history than he does of the 170 years that have 
 elapsed since William Penn landed on these shores. 
 
 It is in no vulgar spirit of local self-complacency — 
 no disparagement of other studies that I say this. I 
 state an unquestioned fact. — Ignorance of our history 
 is a reproach abroad and at home. Far from dispa- 
 raging other studies, I would encourage them, but 
 always in strict subordination to interest in what is 
 local. Whilst in the most catholic spirit, I would, 
 within appreciable limits, enlarge the circle of study 
 
13 
 
 and reading — never would I so far extend it that the 
 attraction of the centre should be lost. There is many 
 a book alien in title and apparent character, which the 
 intellio-ent American student will find fruitful of sug- 
 o-estions and lessons for us and ours. But there are stu- 
 dies which are utterly, and in my poor judgment, per- 
 niciously alien— theoretically and practically useless ; 
 these and all such I would reject, as unworthy an Ame- 
 rican student's sight or thought. I never see the mind 
 of American man or woman turned outward, or back- 
 ward, and wasted on foreign or obsolete studies with- 
 out deep and most honest regret. The poet's rule is 
 true in study as in morals : 
 
 " To make a happy ^/'esiWe clime 
 That's the true pathos and sublime 
 Of human life." 
 
 That which bears upon our local destinies as Ame- 
 ricans ought to be beyond everything the object of our 
 serious studies. 
 
 I have said that the intelligent student will find 
 much of direct, domestic interest in books, whose 
 titles promise little. All depends on the spirit in 
 which he reads. He will find 'homely' matters, 
 where he least expects them — but he must look for 
 them with an American eye and cherish them in an 
 American heart. 
 
 A traveller's recollections are never in very good 
 taste ; but I may be pardoned for alluding to a visit, a 
 
14 
 
 few years ago, to the beautiful Temple Church in Lon- 
 don — the church, I mean, attached to the Law Asso- 
 ciation of the Inner Temple. Wandering there among 
 the graves of Knights Templar of ancient days, and 
 the rich and varied marble slabs, commemorative of 
 dead English lawyers, great and sm. all, those I had 
 heard of and those I had not, all emblazoned with 
 equal pomp of monumental praise, it is impossible to 
 describe the pleasure with which my eye happened to 
 light on an humble cenotaph, erected to the memory 
 of a young student, bearing a familiar American and 
 Philadelphian name, " Philemon Helmsley ;" the 
 stone said, " of Queen Anne's County, Maryland, 
 who died in London, 1 2th May, 1752, aged 24."* 
 
 And then, my mind travelling back to times of colo- 
 nial dependency, which, measuring by the world's 
 chronology, were but of yesterday, when American 
 students of law thought their education incomplete 
 without a year or two in the Temple, or at Lincoln's 
 Inn, I thought not so much of the change which the 
 lapse of time has worked in this as in everything, but 
 of the actual and significant element in our history, 
 which the state of times and manners there evolved. 
 Standing by the tomb of this American law student, I 
 could not but think of the varied learning he, and those 
 like him, received in England at that time — not the 
 
 * Mr. Heltnsley, I have since learned, was first cousin of Chief 
 .Tiisticp Tilchman. 
 
15 
 
 mere learning of the law, for that was the least of it, 
 but of the unconscious masculine training which the 
 intelligent American young man had in what he heard 
 and saw every day that he lived in the Metropolitan at- 
 mosphere. There are interesting suggestions connected 
 with this feature of Colonial life. It is a little chapter 
 worth studying. The American students of law in 
 London, before the Revolution, were students of high 
 principles, which many of them were destined soon 
 to call into action. It was their habit to go night 
 after night to Parliament, listening to discussions 
 of constitutional law from Chatham and Mansfield, 
 and that other great constitutional lawyer. Lord 
 Camden, whose true fame — thanks to a delight- 
 ful living biographer — has but lately been rescued 
 from the shade — from Dunning and Conway, from 
 Burlve and Barre — from all the great men who then 
 were fighting for British liberty, violated in America.* 
 While some of these students came back from Eng- 
 
 * Let nie here make a most sincere acknowledgment of the plea- 
 sure afforded on this side of the Atlantic by Lord Campbell's Chan- 
 cery Biographies. His Life of Lord Camden is a late, though hearty 
 tribute to the memory of one of England's greatest statesmen. — Two 
 other Biographies (not professional) have yet to be written, if Ame- 
 rican lame is worth having — Lord Shelburne's and General Con- 
 Way's. One of Colonel Barre is, I observe, in progress. An At?iC' 
 rican Life of Chatham, well executed, would be a most desirable con- 
 tribution to History. 
 
16 
 
 land, Loyalists, there were many who, thus schooled, 
 returned thorough out and out American patriots. 
 One may easily imagine a young American in Lon- 
 don, poring over his law books in seclusion all 
 day, with no news from a distant home but mur- 
 murs and hopeless complaint — of rights violated and 
 interests trampled under foot — feeling, in the op- 
 pressive atmosphere around him, all the insolence of 
 metropolitan authority and prejudice; but at night 
 crowding his way into the gallery of Parliament, to 
 hear debates on American affairs — to hear such a voice 
 as that of William Pitt utter the electric words '' I re- 
 joice that America has resisted T' to see the historical 
 tapestry of St. Stephen's flutter at his tones, and 
 Mansfield and the ministerial lawyers tremble at his 
 frown. The hearts of the young American law stu- 
 dents as they wandered, those nights, home to their 
 chambers, must have swelled proudly at the recollec- 
 tion of such words as these. It was a noble training 
 to study law in this fashion and in those days. 
 
 I do not mean to say, that the sight of Mr. Helm- 
 sley's tombstone suggested all this train of thought, 
 but his name and birth-place, crowded as it was amidst 
 strange and prouder monuments, had an interest which 
 it would be affectation to deny. 
 
 And so it is with study, for if, I repeat, the senti- 
 ment, or the sympathy with what is American, be in 
 the reader's heart, there is no occasion to limit or re- 
 
17 
 
 strain excursive intellectual wandering. Let me, so 
 far as I can within brief limits, illustrate what I 
 mean by references to books, read in the hurried 
 moments of professional leisure, — those brief, bright 
 moments, late at night and just before tea-time, — which 
 lawyers can have, if they choose to claim them, but 
 which lawyers now-a-days seem ashamed to admit 
 they can command. 
 
 Take, for example, a celebrated British author, who 
 the casual reader will say is least likely of all others to 
 suororest thoug-hts of America?! interest. I mean, and 
 the choice is made very much at random, Dean Swift, 
 the Tory Ecclesiastic of the days of Queen Anne. 
 Reading what Swift wrote, with a desire and curiosity 
 to see something bearing on us and our interests, one 
 cannot fail being struck with the variety of its sugges- 
 tions. 
 
 Swift, as we all know, was one of those prodigies 
 of ineffectual genius, which the experiment of Provi- 
 dence is continually evolving for our guidance or ad- 
 monition, who with talents adequate to any exigency, 
 or any result, came to the end of a long and turbulent 
 career, leaving no bright mark behind him. The ne- 
 glected volumes in which his multitudinous works 
 are contained, with all the fascination of the most 
 charming of biographers and critics, are rarely stu- 
 died, except by the curious belles-lettres scholar. 
 The satire is daily becoming more difficult of appre- 
 
 3 
 
18 
 
 elation, the heart-breaking mysteries of Stella and Va- 
 nessa every day less interesting, and the truth is, as a 
 general observation, we know the once illustrious Dean 
 as a disappointed pamphleteer and nothing more. 
 
 Yet if the student, led by any stray impulse, reads 
 Swift's life and writings, with the American tendency 
 I have spoken of, he will find, (at least so it seems to 
 me,) much of peculiar interest. 
 
 His biographer states, on what authority I am un- 
 able to say, that about the year 1707, when Swift was 
 a Whig, and a friend of Addison and Lord Somers, it 
 was proposed he should accompany Governor Hunter 
 to America, and be consecrated "Bishop of Virginia.* 
 Now, had Swift, with his turbulent spirit and charac- 
 teristic detestation, of political tyranny and misrule, 
 come to these Colonies, what a different career might 
 his have been, and how much wider and greater his 
 fame, had his eloquence been evoked on this stage — a 
 Nation, not a party, to applaud the swelling act, — in- 
 stead of the narrow one of Dublin politics; but the 
 offer of such a mitred exile, to a man of Swift's ambi- 
 tion, was too closely akin to insult to be submitted to. 
 If made, it was, no doubt, contemptuously declined ; 
 and it is curious to see what he, and others of his day, 
 (the golden age of English Literature,) thought of us 
 Americans — and as we may infer, of such a mission. 
 
 * Scott's Life of Swift, chapter ii. p. 85. 
 
19 
 
 Vindicating the people of Ireland from some metropo- 
 litan oppression, he breaks out, as if unable to control 
 the insolence of his spirit, and the utter scorn with 
 which an Englishman of those times looked down 
 on us: 
 
 " It is clear that some ministers are apt to look 
 down, from their high elevation, on this kingdom of 
 Ireland, as if it were only one of our colonies of out- 
 casts in America'' "^ 
 
 Thus spoke the Irish ecclesiastic of those days, re- 
 flecting, no doubt, the popular sentiment of the time ; 
 and may not the American student find something 
 here worthy of a moment's complacent meditation? 
 In little over a century from the time these words of 
 scorn were uttered, by one of England's wisest men, 
 
 * Scott's Swift, vol. vii. p. 25. Dryden, in the Hind and Pan- 
 ther, has some vigorous, though coarse lines, on the colonial system 
 of his day : 
 
 " Here let my sorrow give my satire place, 
 To raise new blushes on the British race; 
 Our sailing ships like common sewers we use. 
 And through our distant colonies ditfuse 
 Tiie draught of dungeons and the stench of stews, 
 Whom, when their home-bred honesty is lost. 
 We disembogue on some "far Indian"' coast. 
 Thieves, pandars, palliards, sins of every sort. 
 These are the manufactures we export; 
 And these the missioners our zeal has made, 
 For with my country's pardon, be it said. 
 Religion is the least of all onr trade." 
 
20 
 
 an American frigate, chartered by the charity of those 
 very " outcasts," lay at anchor in the Cove of Cork, 
 dispensing iier bounty to save Ireland from starvation, 
 and the Royal standard of a Queen, ten times more 
 powerful and ten thousand times more queen-like than 
 Queen Anne, gracefully and gratefully saluted Ame- 
 rican grain ships, hastening through the Irish channel 
 on an errand of mercy to her subjects. 
 
 Scorning, or unable to secure an American mitre, 
 thwarted by the antipathy of the Queen, who, in heart 
 a Stuart, never forgave the Tale of a Tub, Swift at 
 last took refuge in an Irish Deanery, and then it was 
 that, thrust in exile among a people he detested, he 
 wrote the political works which, among his country- 
 men, have immortalized his name. He wrote the 
 Drapier's Letters to arouse Ireland against metropolitan 
 oppression — not only against Wood's half-pence, but 
 their principle — against oppression which legislated 
 for her without her consent, taxed her, cut off her 
 manufactures, restricted her commerce, screwed tighter 
 that great engine of colonial tyranny, the Navigation 
 Act — in short, (and this is the application) did every- 
 thing towards Ireland which, forty years later, made 
 the American Revolution. If ever History suggests 
 a prototype, here it is — the chief difference being, 
 that Sir Robert Walpole was wiser than George 
 Grenville, and that Ireland was not America. 
 
 It is in this relation especially; — I wish I had time 
 
21 
 
 to do more than hint at it — that the student, read- 
 ing Swift's forgotten volumes in an American spirit, 
 will realize what I have said — and here, in the dark 
 perplexity of Irish politics — that from which, then and 
 now, every one shrinks back disgusted, will be found 
 a germ of the mighty struggle which created this Ke- 
 public. The statutes against which Swift raised his 
 voice of effectual remonstrance, were the same in prin- 
 ciple as those which, for years, oppressed America, and 
 which, quite as much as the speculative question of 
 Taxation, led to the overthrow of Imperial powder 
 here.* The machinery of resistance, too, non-impor- 
 tation and non-consumption, was the same. Some of 
 Swift's very phrases, their origin not probably traced, 
 became current coin of American declamation, and 
 were habitually used by the pamphleteers of 1775. 
 The common one of " uniting as one man'"-\ is to 
 be found in the Drapier's Letters, and there, too, 
 the student will lind other sentences and phrases 
 of captivating power, which sound very much like 
 those which, a few years later, were uttered in 
 Faneuil Hall and the Court House of Williams- 
 burg, in defiance of the same Imperial and impe- 
 rious authority. It sounds, for instance, very much 
 
 * The curious reader is referred to the Introduction to Mr. Sabine's 
 recent work on the American Loyalists, for an admirable illustration 
 of the idea here incidentally hinted at. 
 
 t Scott's Swift, vol. vii. p. 174. 
 
22 
 
 like American rebellion to hear Swift say to Ireland, 
 " The remedy is wholly in your own hands, and, 
 therefore, I have digressed a little, in order to refresh 
 and continue that spirit among you ; and to let you 
 see that by the Laws of God, of Nations, of Nature, 
 and of your Country, you are and. ought to be as free 
 as your brethren of England."* Or again, when 
 rising to a higher pitch of masculine downright elo- 
 quence, his agitated spirit, goaded to look towards these 
 " colonies of outcasts" as the place of Freedom's re- 
 fuge, he says, " For my own part, who am but one 
 man, of obscure condition, I do solemnly declare in the 
 presence of Almighty God', that I will suffer the most 
 igQominious and torturing death, rather than submit 
 to receive this accursed coin, or any other that shall be 
 liable to the same objections, until they shall be forced 
 on me by a law of my own country ; and if that shall 
 ever happen, I will transport myself into some foreign 
 land, and eat the bread of poverty among a free 
 
 people."! ^ 
 
 There was something very lilte "■ Brother Jona- 
 than" in the tone of these remonstrances. And yet 
 the courtly wTiter, I mean Sir Walter Scott, who has 
 so beautifully described these wrongs and their re- 
 dress, who sees in England's commercial treatment of 
 Ireland nothing " but a short-sighted mercantile policy, 
 
 * Scott's Swift, vol. vii. p. 183. f Ibid. 
 
23 
 
 alike impolitic and cruel, more worthy the monopo- 
 lizing corporation of some peddling borough than the 
 enlightened Senate of a free people," never recognised 
 in it the foreshadowing of the kindred blundering 
 which aroused American rebellion and made the Ame- 
 rican Revolution. At the time, too, few, or none of 
 those reputed wise, saw the probable progress of colo- 
 nial misgovernment and abuse of metropolitan autho- 
 rity ; but there was an observant eye that noted what 
 was happening — for one cannot fail to be struck with 
 the coincidence, that at the very period when Swift was 
 hurling defiance in the face of Walpole and his col- 
 leagues, and vindicating the wrongs of his provincial 
 countrymen against Parliamentary oppression, there 
 was a poor American printer, lodging in a by-street of 
 London, who was watching the struggle closely, and 
 no doubt, laying up in a mind that grasped and re- 
 tained everything, the Dean's lessons of resistance for 
 future use in this distant region. During the period 
 when Swift was publishing the Drapier's Letters and 
 other pamphlets in defence of Ireland, Doctor Frank- 
 lin was on his first visit to England, a vigilant and re- 
 flective watcher of the scene before him ; and then it 
 was that one of those odd incidents of variety occurred 
 which mark his singular career — which brought him, 
 too, in contact with one of the Drapier's nearest 
 friends. 
 
 " One of these days," says Franklin, •' I was, to my 
 
24 
 
 surprise, sent for by a great man I knew only by 
 name, Sir William Wyndham," (Wyndham, all will 
 remember as the Tory leader of his day, the friend 
 of Bolingbroke and patron of Swift,) "and I wait- 
 ed upon him. He had heard, by some means or 
 other, of my swimming from Chelsea to Blackfriars, 
 and of my teaching a young man to swim in a 
 few hours. He had two sons about to set out on 
 their travels, and he wished to have them first 
 taught swimming, and proposed to gratify me hand- 
 somely if I would teach them. They were not yet 
 come to town, and my stay was uncertain, so I 
 could not undertake it. But from this incident, I 
 think it likely, that if I were to remain in England 
 and open a swimming-school, I might get a great deal 
 of money." 
 
 When Franklin next returned to England, Swift's 
 career was over, Wyndham and Bolingbroke were 
 dead, and one of the boys, whom Franklin had refused 
 to teach to swim, was Earl of Egremont, and had suc- 
 ceeded Mr. Pitt as minister of the Crown.* 
 
 Such then, is the use which the American student 
 may make, even of a writer like Swift — such the in- 
 terest he will find in books which, viewed in other 
 
 * Sparks's Franklin, vol, i. p. 65. The Earl of Egremont's sister 
 married George Grenville, and Mr. Grenville's son Thomas nego- 
 tiated the Treaty of 1783 with Franklin. Thomas Grenville died 
 in 1846, at a very advanced age. 
 
26 
 
 relations, have none. So with many others, had I 
 time to call your attention to them. He will find 
 in Lord Chesterfield's Letters — a book of wonder- 
 ful wisdom, once extravagantly praised, and now in- 
 ordinately depreciated — a brief, but intelligible ana- 
 lysis of the Navigation Act of Great Britain, w^ithout 
 a precise knowledge of which, no one can pretend to 
 know the true grievances of the American colonies — 
 in George Selwyn's Letters, curious materials for 
 Philadelphia history — in the Life of Jeremy Ben- 
 tham, a new eyewitness narrative of Franklin's ex- 
 amination before the Privy Council — in Hume's let- 
 ters to the Abbe Morellet, the best description of 
 Pennsylvania paper currency ; and the coincidence 
 is rather curious, that the newspapers brought by 
 one of the last steamers from England, and acci- 
 dentally read during the preparation of this address, 
 contain the report of a meeting held near Birmingham, 
 to procure a relaxation of Sir Robert Peel's Bank Act, 
 at which one of the orators refers, as an admirable pre- 
 cedent, to this very Pennsylvania provincial currency 
 as described by Hume — a sort of ante-revolutionary 
 relief notes.* 
 
 * Since this Address was delivered, Lord Campbell's Biography of 
 Mr. Wedderburn (Lord Loughborough) has appeared. 
 
 Lord Campbell rather exaggerates the effect of the Scotch lawyer's 
 invective on Fratiklin. The effect of the outrage was, however, very 
 great on this side of the water, and was a predominant element of 
 
 4 
 
26 
 
 Again, if the American student will follow Hume's 
 recent and most agreeable biographer, and collate the 
 pages of the first and second edition of his History of 
 England, he may trace the progress of his Tory 
 Pyrrhonism in the suppression or mutilation of every 
 passage w^hich seemed to foretell the enlargement of 
 human liberty, either on this or the other side of the 
 Atlantic. There is something very curious in it — 
 especially so in the contrast between Hume's dispa- 
 ragement and the sanguine appreciation, by some of 
 his contemporaries, of the destinies of our country. 
 
 In the first edition of Hume's History, the following 
 passage — beautiful in the transp^-rent simplicity of its 
 diction — occurred ; — speaking of America, he said : 
 " The seeds of many a noble state have been sown in 
 climates kept desolate by the wild manners of the an- 
 cient inhabitants, (but) an asylum is secured in that 
 solitary world for liberty and science, if ever the spread- 
 ing of unlimited Empire, or the inroads of barbarous 
 nations should aorain extino^uish them in this turbulent 
 and restless hemisphere." 
 
 When Hume revised his original work, he struck 
 
 Doctor Franklin's popularity, not till then very firmly established at 
 home. No American writer, or indeed no one, English or Ameri- 
 can, who had studied the yet unexplored subject of our revolution, 
 would say, as Lord Campbell says, that the scene at the Privy Coun- 
 cil " mainly conduced to the civil war that followed, and to the dis- 
 memberment of the Empire." 
 
27 
 
 the prediction out, and it appears in none of the 
 subsequent editions. On the other hand, Horace 
 Walpole, writing about the same time, from Straw- 
 berry Hill, to Sir Horace Mann, saw the American 
 future much more cheerfully. 
 
 " Don't tell me," he writes, " I am grown old, and 
 peevish, and supercilious — name the (great men) of 
 1774 and I'll submit. The next Augustan age will 
 dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will be 
 a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, a 
 Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton in Peru." Wal- 
 pole's predictions of 1774, now in 1847 when Boston 
 has its great historian, and the flag of those who speak 
 the English language, is flying on every plain of 
 Mexico, and from the headlands of California, seem 
 very like trustworthy prophecy.* 
 
 * Letter, November 24, 1774, vol. ii. p. 301. There is extant, I 
 may here observe, a letter from Hume to Gibbon, written in October, 
 1767, in which the following passage in a very dilferent tone occurs : 
 " Why do you compose in French, and carry fagots to the wood, as 
 Horace says, with regard to those Romans who wrote in Greek ? I 
 grant that you have a like motive to those Romans, and adopt a lan- 
 guage more generally diffused than your own native tongue ; but 
 have you not remarked the fate of those two ancient languages in 
 following ages. The Latin, though then less celebrated, and con- 
 fined to more narrow limits, has, in some measure, outlived the 
 Greek, and is now become generally understood by men of letters. 
 Let the French, therefore, triumph in the present diffusion of their 
 
28 
 
 One other illustration of this capability of foreign 
 history, to throw and borrow light from what we do at 
 home, and I pass to other more practical and appro- 
 priate views. 
 
 I have referred already to the American students of 
 law in England before the Revolution, and to the les- 
 sons and principles of statesmanship, which, almost 
 unconsciously, not from books but from incidents and 
 examples of the times, they were learning. These, 
 however, were not always mere politics, nor matters 
 relating only to the pending dispute between the Colo- 
 nies and the Mother Co^3ntry, but lessons of practical 
 legislation, which they were enabled to put into action 
 in America, long before the sluggish wisdom of Great 
 Britain could be reconciled to them. In 1758, oc- 
 curred the memorable attempt to extend to all cases of 
 illegal restraint the Habeas Corpus act of Charles II. 
 Supported by Pitt and Camden, opposed by Mansfield 
 and Hard wi eke, it met the fate of all reforms in that 
 age of servility, and failed — nor did it become the law 
 of England till within our memory — no longer ago than 
 1816.* The Pennsylvania reader will be proud in 
 knowing, that the amendment of the Habeas Corpus 
 
 tongue. Our solid and increasifig establishments in America, where 
 we need less dread the inundation of barbarians, promise a superior 
 stability and duration to the English language^ 
 * Lord Mahon's History of England, vol. iv. p. 185. 
 
29 
 
 Act — the chance bulwark of British liberty — in the very 
 words which American law students had heard Hard- 
 wicke and Mansfield decry and reject it in 1758, and 
 which was slowly and reluctantly adopted by Parlia- 
 ment only in 1816, was made the law of Pennsylvania 
 sixty years ago, on the 18th of February, 1785 — being 
 reported from a committee, of which Anthony Wayne, 
 of Chester County, was chairman. Pennsylvania was, 
 I believe, the first of the American States in this — the 
 Massachusetts statute to the same effect, being just 
 one month later. 
 
 Thus, then, in these cursory and unconnected illus- 
 trations, have I sought to vindicate my theory of study 
 from any imputation of narrowness of design. I hope 
 I am understood as asking, that only those intellectual 
 pursuits should be avoided, which lead the American 
 student so far away from the paths which it is the 
 design of Providence he must pursue, as to make him 
 (and there are many such around us,) a discontented, 
 impracticable sentimentalist. His first, and predomi- 
 nant study, should be his own homely history. It will 
 well repay him, if he knows how to read it, and will 
 make him a practical, hopeful, contented American 
 man. Take, for example, the single branch of histo- 
 rical literature, with which we have direct concern — 
 the history of Pennsylvania. Read it with the sym- 
 pathies of an American, and see if it may not be made, 
 even in its brief antiquity, full of interest. Tf the read- 
 
30 
 
 ing people of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia were to 
 be polled, if those who now hear me — a fair represen- 
 tation of the intelligent class of our fellow-citizens — 
 were honestly to say what idea they have of the annals 
 of their native soil, they would be apt to admit, that 
 beyond a few leading facts, they know little about it, 
 and perhaps care less — that the only idea they have of 
 William Penn is derived from the sombre figure in 
 front of the Hospital, or the caricature which, in the 
 form of a picture, hangs in the State House — they 
 know he landed here — made a treaty with the Indians, 
 the site of which is marked by a fragile monument, 
 the last news of which was, that it was fast tumbling 
 to decay — they know, too, that Dr. Franklin came 
 here a poor boy, and printed a newspaper and Poor 
 Richard's Almanac — that the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence and the Federal Constitution were signed in 
 Philadelphia, and here, in nine cases out of ten, the 
 knowledge ends. 
 
 Tell the merchant, as he hurries to or from his 
 counting-room, the lawyer, in the hours he wastes 
 idling about the Court House, and we do waste a 
 o-reat many, — the Divine, as he saunters from one 
 theological bookstore or periodical ofl^ice to another, 
 his armour riveted, and his weapons of contro- 
 versy sharpened anew, — tell any one of the busy 
 throng of Chestnut or Second Street, that William 
 Penn lived in the old house at the corner of Norris's 
 
;3l 
 
 Alley — that in one auction store, not far off, was the 
 first meetinqr held to resist the Boston Port Bill — and 
 in another, a little farther, Patrick Henry made the 
 great speeches that immortalize his name, and I very 
 much doubt if the throng will pause for a moment, or 
 bestow any other thought, than wonder that any one 
 cares for such trumpery. 
 
 If, however, they could be tempted, in an American 
 spirit, to open even the meagre volumes which we 
 have, and I concede they are meagre and imperfect, 
 they would find them deeply interesting. They would 
 find in them, too, what they do not dream of — not the 
 illustration of an isolated branch of knowledge — not 
 mere local or narrow provincial annals, but closely in- 
 terlaced, the connexion being more visible every day 
 that passes, with the men and the events of Transat- 
 lantic story, and they would feel, the more in all these 
 relations it is studied, pride in their simple domestic 
 institutions becoming more rational and better founded. 
 
 I repeat, ours is no merely isolated provincial story. 
 If you will excuse me for so long trespassing on your 
 attention, the task is not difficult to show what I 
 mean, and what its actual relations are, and always 
 have been, to the greater and more attractive world 
 abroad, to the familiar events of British and Conti- 
 nental story. 
 
 There is, as it seems to me, a long and dreary period 
 of British hislorv, from the death of Cromwell to the 
 
3'2 
 
 birth of the first WiUiam Pitt, when the world, and 
 especially that part of it with which we had relations, 
 seemed unable to produce a single great, or complete, 
 or picturesque character — the long, cheerless day of 
 political churchmanship — of kings lying to their sub- 
 jects, especially as to religion — of ministers trafficking 
 with foreign pow-ers — of the French monarch buying 
 one English king, and giving alms to another — of 
 patriots receiving money from abroad — of heroes, like 
 Marlborough, betraying their master, and corre- 
 sponding with an adverse Pretender — the days when 
 Milton was proscribed and neglected, and Dryden 
 and Pryor w^ere petted and patronised. Such is 
 this long chapter of transatlantic story. But it was 
 then that, on this side of the ocean, the growth of 
 a new race of men, and a new Nation was silently 
 beginning "the vigorous race of undiseased mankind," 
 and year after year was bringing some new emigra- 
 tion, each differing from that which had come before, 
 and all destined, in a few years, to be welded together 
 and form the great social union from w^hich this Re- 
 public has grown. This history of emigration, begin- 
 ning with Virginia and ending with Georgia, is full of 
 untold interest, and between these two points of time, 
 — almost equidistant, — was the arrival of William Penn 
 here. ' 
 
 Let those who decry our limited provincial story, 
 and think nothing interesting that is not connected 
 
8;i 
 
 with the greater and more turbulent European world, 
 see who William Penn was, and what part he really 
 played on the world's great theatre. It is to be 
 lamented, that biography has not yet done its ap- 
 propriate work for this singularly great man, and 
 that even his eulogists have not defined precisely 
 his true and varied merits. With the exception 
 of Mr. Fisher's beautiful discourse, delivered some 
 years ago before this Society, on Penn's private cha- 
 racter, and a series of clever articles, lately published 
 in a periodical called the Friend, I am not aware of 
 any elaborate attempt at accurate illustration of his 
 character. To his benevolence and purity, perhaps to 
 his statesmanship, full justice has been done, but his 
 scholarlike ability has not had the praise it deserves, 
 and some day will receive. We talk habitually of the 
 days of Addison and Swift, or of the older and more 
 robust writers of the Restoration, but we never care to 
 remember, that intermediate to both schools, there 
 lived one man, whose style, in all the peculiari- 
 ties of English vigour and beauty, rarely has been 
 surpassed. Penn was really a great writer of his 
 times — the extracts from his letters and public papers 
 glisten like bright gems on Proud's russet, uncouth 
 pages, and I could easily select passages, the beauty 
 of which is most remarkable. Observe, for instance, 
 the simple and eloquent precision of two sentences, 
 taken, at random, from his letter of 1683, to the Free 
 
34 
 
 Society of Traders — describing his negotiation with 
 the Indians, he says : 
 
 " During the time that this person spoke, not a man 
 of them was observed to whisper or smile; the old, 
 grave ; the young, reverent in their deportment. They 
 speak little, but fervently, and with elegance. I have 
 never seen more natural sagacity, considering them 
 without the help (I was going to say, the spoil) of tra- 
 dition, and he will deserve the name of wise that out- 
 wits them in any treaty about a thing they under- 
 stand." 
 
 Or again : 
 
 " Do not," he says, " abuse them, but let them have 
 justice, and you win them. The worst is, that they 
 are the worse for the Christians, who have propagated 
 their vices, and yielded them tradition for ill and not 
 for good things. But as low an ebb as this people are 
 at, and as inglorious as their condition looks, the Chris- 
 tians have not outlived their sight, with all their pre- 
 tensions to a higher manifestation. What good, then, 
 might not a good people graft, when there is so dis- 
 tinct a knowledge left between good and evil ? I be- 
 seech God to incline the hearts of all that come into 
 these parts, to outlive the knowledge of the natives by 
 a fixed obedience to the will of God ; for it were mise- 
 rable, indeed, for us to fall under the censure of the 
 poor Indian's conscience, while we make profession of 
 things so far transcending." 
 
^ 
 
 35 
 
 And there is nothinof in our lang^uao^e, it seems to 
 me, more strikingly beautiful than the Introduction or 
 Preface to Penn's Frame of Government. He was a 
 scholar, a ivriting orator. He was in the highest and 
 best sense, a courtier and a gentleman — and had not 
 his genius lighted and sunk in the Serbonian bog of 
 theological controversy, from the gloomy edge of which 
 the most adventurous student recoils dismayed, Penn 
 would have been among the popular classics of our 
 literature. Every word of his political writings, his 
 familiar letters — all, in short, that was popularly writ- 
 ten, justify this praise. 
 
 The history of his career, from his birth in 1644 till 
 his death in 1718, might be made the history of Eng- 
 land, for though a contemned sectary, he was the friend 
 and confidant of England's king at the crisis of her 
 fate — at a change of dynasty. This was Penn's mis- 
 fortune. The Stuarts, like the Bourbons, seemed not 
 only born to ill luck themselves, but born to drag their 
 friends down to ill luck with them, and Penn's fidelity 
 to James H. and his family, was the controlling misfor- 
 tune of his life. It took him, and it kept him from his 
 colony. The striking language of the first sentence of 
 the Frame of Government has an application to him- 
 self, and the necessity of actual presence here which 
 he did not think of. 
 
 "While he stood here," he says, "all went#v'ell. 
 There was no need of coercive or compulsive means — 
 
36 
 
 the precept of divine love and truth in his bosom was 
 the guide and keeper of (their) innocency." 
 
 And sad indeed was it for Penn and for Pennsyl- 
 vania, that, having planted the seed, he did not remain 
 to watch the growth, but was willing, or compelled to 
 return to the purlieus of a Court whose master, a selfish 
 and cold-hearted bigot and libertine, never thanked 
 or remembered the fidelity of any follower. The spe- 
 culation is hardly a vain one, that had Penn remained 
 here, his personal influence would have saved us from 
 the miserable perplexities of our early politics — those 
 wretched squabbles, which have lasted in some form 
 from that day to this, and have produced and are pro- 
 ducing their natural fruit, in that elevation of medio- 
 crity and depreciation of intellectual distinction, which 
 makes Pennsylvania a byword. One legacy our first 
 settlers certainly have left us — poor politics — ^jealous, 
 ungenerous, disparaging politics. I know nothing 
 more painful than some chapters of our early local 
 history, and those, too, which describe what occurred 
 while Penn was living. We read of Hannah Penn's 
 yearly visits of condolence to the Court of the exiled 
 Stuarts, and her assiduous kindness to the widowed 
 Queen, Mary of Modena.* We find Penn himself, 
 
 * Miss Strickland's Queens of England, vol. ix. p. 345, " Every 
 year Mrs. Penn, the wife of James's former protege, th-e founder of 
 Penn%lvania, paid a visit to the Court of St. Germain's, carrying 
 with her a collection of all the little presents which the numerous 
 friends and well-wishers of James II. and his queen onuld muster." 
 
37 
 
 after his day of severe probation, during the reign of 
 William III., a favoured subject of Queen Anne, and 
 in the very year that he wrote his memorable letter of 
 expostulation, eloquent in its very querulousness, on 
 the treatment of James Logan by the Colonial politi- 
 cians, and when, more than ever, we might wish him 
 here to quiet these difficulties and disturbances, we 
 find him the organ of Court favour at home, the means 
 by which men, destined to become great, approached 
 the throne, and secured the favour of the minister. 
 Swift, in his journal to Stella, thus describes an even- 
 ing of joyous conviviality with Penn. It was at the 
 house of Harley, afterwards Earl of Oxford, and the 
 triumphant statesman, fresh in his victory over Somers 
 and Godolphin. 
 
 " The porter told me his master was just gone to 
 dinner with much company, and desired I would come 
 an hour hence, which I did, expecting to hear Mr. 
 Harley was gone out ; but they had just done dinner. 
 Mr. Harley came out to me, brought me in, and pre- 
 sented me to his son-in-law. Lord Dublane, and his 
 own son, and among others, to Will Penn, the Qua- 
 ker : we sate two hours, drinking as good wine as you 
 do; and two hours he and I were alone." 
 
 Surely, it is no unfair disparagement of Penn's true 
 fame, to wish he had then been here, watching closely 
 over the budding^ energies of his infant and distracted 
 settlement. James Logan was a truer, steadier friend. 
 
38 
 
 better worthy his companionship than Oxford, or Bo- 
 hngbroke, or Swift, or any of the false courtiers of this 
 falsest of courts. But Penn's dfestiny was that of a 
 hopeless absentee. 
 
 There is one familiar incident connected with Penn 
 and the foundation of this colony, to which the occur- 
 rences of recent times have given rather peculiar in- 
 terest. It has been of late the fashion in Great Bri- 
 tain to revile with especial ribaldry our state of Penn- 
 sylvania as the arch-repudiator of the world, and those 
 can attest the severity of the sarcasm, who, in the 
 hour of merited opprobrium, happened to be abroad. 
 So long as we deserved the obloquy (and there was a 
 period when we unquestionably did) — all retort on the 
 delinquencies of others was in the worst possible taste. 
 There was but one thing for the American man of 
 honour to do — to submit in silence. But now, that, 
 by an effort, the merit of which we only know who 
 feel every day how hard it is to keep the mutinous 
 blood of young Democracy from some exorbitance — 
 how much harder to bring it back when it has once 
 gone wrong — now that we have, in a great measure, 
 restored our credit, we have a right, if we please, to 
 open the volume of history, and with the record try to 
 stop the mouths of persevering ill nature. Doing so, 
 we find that Penn's plan of colonising America had its 
 origin in a stupendous Government repudiation, along- 
 side of which Pennsylvania's brief omission to pay her 
 
39 
 
 interest shrinks into insignificance. His latest bio- 
 grapher thus describes it. 
 
 "The favour of the king, Charles II., and of his 
 brother, the Duke of York, had been freely sought, by 
 the dying Admiral for his son, and freely promised. 
 But William Penn had a claim more substantial than 
 a Royal promise of those days. The crown was in- 
 debted to the estate of Admiral Penn for services, loan 
 and interest, to the amount of £ 16,000. The exche- 
 quer, under the convenient management of Shaftes- 
 bury, would not meet the claim. Penn, who was en- 
 gaged in settling the estate of his father, petitioned the 
 King, in June, 1680, for a grant of land in America as 
 a payment for all this debt."* 
 
 This is a very gentle account of a very ugly trans- 
 action. Admiral Penn was no pensioner on the bounty 
 of the crown, but had as good a claim on the Royal 
 Treasury as ever a holder of a five per cent, bond has 
 had on ours. Not .only was the gallant old sailor's 
 pay 'heavily in arrears, but we read in Pepys's diary 
 of 20th and 30th August, 1667, the following entries, 
 which show to what degrading necessities Royalty 
 was once reduced, and that part of Penn's debt was 
 that which honest insolvency always protects — a debt 
 for borrowed money. " Sir William Coventry," says 
 Pepys, "fell to discourse of retrenchments. He do 
 
 * Memoir of Ponn, by Mr. Ellis, in Sparks's American Biography. 
 
40 
 
 tell me he hath propounded how the charge of the 
 Navy in peace shall come within £200,000, by keep- 
 ing out twenty-four ships in summer and ten in win- 
 ter. He did single out Sir William Penn and me, 
 and desired us to lend the king some money." 
 
 '' August 30. At Whitehall, I met with Sir George 
 Downing, who tells me that Sir William Penn had 
 offered to lend £500, and I tell him of my £300 which 
 he would have me to lend on the credit of the latter of 
 the act ; but I understand better, there being no de- 
 light in lending money to be paid by the king two 
 years hence." 
 
 And Pepys was right, for in little more than two 
 years from that time, the king closed the Exchequer 
 and repudiated debts quite as meritorious as those 
 which modern times, in the wildest and most specula- 
 tive extravagance, have created, and as we have seen, 
 Admiral Penn's executor, thirteen years later, was 
 content to take a colonial grant — in plain English, 
 what we would call, back lands — in liquidation of this 
 repudiated debt of honour.* 
 
 Thus it is, (and I have had time barely to hint at it) 
 
 * Whether it is as some sort of compensation for this injustice to 
 the old Admiral, or as an acknowledgment of our founder's fidelity 
 to the House of Stuart, who are, it seems, among the oddities of the 
 day, coming into fashion again, I do not know, but I observe among 
 the decorations of the new Houses of Parliament, the only real Ame- 
 rican subject illustrated is Penn's Treaty with the Indians, 
 
41 
 
 that the opening chapter of our provincial history, 
 which describes the personal career of Penn and his 
 contemporaries — is full of the most remarkable and 
 picturesque incidents of times which certainly were 
 not barren of interest. I shall be content if any one 
 who hears me can be induced to think so. 
 
 Penn died in 1718, and then it was, as he descended, 
 the victim of misfortune and disappointment, to his 
 grave, that the career of the luckiest man that ever 
 lived — wonderful in his ability, most wonderful in his 
 success, began to unfold itself. Dr. Franklin was 
 twelve years old Avhen William Penn died, and five 
 years later, he rambled to Philadelphia, and from the 
 moment that he came he identified himself with us 
 and ours — our history, our prosperity, our destiny. 
 He is part and a most illustrious part of Pennsylvania 
 history, and I cannot relinquish the hope, that a Penn- 
 sylvania man will some day do justice to his yet ne- 
 glected biography. There are many who have Frank- 
 lin's blood in their veins — who share, too, the rich 
 inheritance of his genius, who well can do it. We 
 may contemn and disparage hereditary pride — not the 
 vulgar sentiment called pride of family, but the pride 
 of hereditary talent and patriotism — as we please, it 
 is the fashion of the times to do so ; but there is in 
 the succession of talent and virtue something attrac- 
 tive. There is something, at least, picturesque in see- 
 ing, as we have seen, one living Imeal descendant of 
 
 G 
 
42 
 
 Pennsylvania's first and great philosopher, entrusted 
 by the Nation with the execution of a gigantic scheme 
 of scientific beneficence — measuring from mountain to 
 mountain, and headland to headland, the boundaries 
 of a continent — and another, the close bond of affec- 
 tionate brotherhood only broken by death, perishing a 
 martyr to science amidst the howling hurricane of the 
 Gulf Stream. And here let me pause and say, citizens 
 of Philadelphia, to you — that it is a discredit to Phila- 
 delphia, that one of her gallant sons, a brave officer, 
 born and bred here, a great grandson of our Frank- 
 lin, dying, not on the field of battle, but in the dis- 
 charge of duties of peaceful and philanthropic science, 
 should have perished almost within hail of the capes 
 of the Delaware, and not one word of pubhc testimony 
 be uttered — no official act of honour be done to his 
 memory. Such neglect is injustice to ourselves.* 
 
 The two lives of Penn and Franklin, covering more 
 than a century, contain all the history of our State that 
 can yet be written. And what a narrative is this of 
 Franklin. We are apt enough to talk of him as of 
 Washington, in stereotyped terms of vague enthu- 
 siasm, but rarely do we meditate on the detailed inci- 
 dents, the peculiarity of those ninety years of Penn- 
 
 * Lieutenant George M. Bache, of the U. S. Navy, was washed 
 overboard and drowned in September 1846, in a gale of wind in the 
 Gulf Stream. He was attached, at the time, to the Coast Survey ser- 
 vice, of which Mr. A, D. Bache is the distinguished superintendant. 
 
43 
 
 sylvania life ; the quick transition of great events as he 
 ascended slowly and surely the long steep hill of his 
 fame — the boy of seventeen sleeping in the Meeting 
 House, with one roll of bread in his pocket, and no 
 roll of bread in prospect — and then at the distance of 
 almost a century, the patriarch going to his grave 
 amid the universal mourning of a Nation. It has all 
 yet to be written, and whoever writes it writes the his- 
 tory of a civilized and enlightened world. I have had 
 occasion, in another relation, to refer to an incident of 
 Franklin's first obscure visit to Great Britain. Down 
 to the period of his second visit, he has described his 
 career in his own matchless style of simple English 
 writing. And here again, as of Penn, let me say, that 
 too high praise cannot be bestowed on Franklin as a 
 master of the best of rhetoric, that which, in simple 
 and transparent language expresses exact ideas — that 
 rhetoric, alongside of which the hyperboles and infla- 
 tions of our times are as grotesque and olfensive as 
 players' spangles by daylight. I know nothing of in- 
 tellectual discipline that would do more good than to 
 put our exaggerated, adjective-loving countrymen on 
 a strict substantive diet, and to make them study the 
 severe model of their ow^n Franklin's style. It is like 
 writing by telegraph — no waste, no expletives. It was 
 a style that had its root in clear and distinct percep- 
 tions ; it was English really undefiled ; it was rhetoric 
 that withstood contagion, for while Mr. Jefferson, al- 
 
44 
 
 ways a sprightly and originally an accurate writer, re- 
 turned from France a gallicised English rhetorician, 
 Doctor Franklin, who was there much longer, with at 
 least equal participation in French intercourse, wrote 
 the same good manly English to the latest moment of 
 his life. There was in it a peculiarity of graceful pre- 
 cision that is scarcely imitable, and if I were asked to 
 select specimens of the exact and clear enunciation of 
 a thought, or series of thoughts, I might refer to two 
 from the pen of Franklin, on which my eye has 
 casually lighted, and which, though entirely simple 
 and unpretending, seem to me the perfection of good 
 English writing. One is his character, in three lines, 
 of William Coleman, one of the founders of the Junto. 
 
 " Lastly, William Coleman, then a merchant's clerk, 
 about my age, who had the coolest, clearest head, the 
 best heart, and the exactest morals of almost any man 
 I ever met with." In these few lines, is all of charac- 
 teristic praise that pages of modern hyperbole could 
 have given, simply and inartificially said, without a 
 big word from the beginning to the end of it, the per- 
 fection of exact English writing. 
 
 The other, also from Franklin's pen, is what you 
 are all familiar with, the Inscription on the corner 
 stone of the Philadelphia Hospital. 
 
 In the year of Christ, 
 
 M.D.C.C.L.V. 
 
 George the Second, happily reigning, 
 
45 
 
 For he sought the happiness of his people ; 
 
 Philadelphia flourishing, 
 
 For her inhabitants were publick spirited. 
 
 This Building, 
 
 By the bounty of the Government 
 
 And of many private persons. 
 
 Was piously founded 
 
 For the relief of the sick and miserable. 
 
 May the God of mercies 
 
 Bless the undertaking. 
 
 Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, with all their 
 stores of lapidary memorials, may be challenged to 
 produce anything more precisely beautiful, more 
 clearly significant — that which neither says too little 
 nor too much, and says what it does in appropriate 
 and not hyperbolised English, than what Franklin 
 thus traced on this foundation stone. 
 
 Franklin's autobiography ends at the period when 
 scenes of wider interest were opening. That record 
 he has left for others to complete. When he went to 
 England, in 1764, as agent of this colony, he had 
 risen, though not to the highest, yet to a platform far 
 higher than when, thirty years before, he and Ralph 
 had burrowed in obscure London lodgings, and his 
 highest aspiration was to teach young noblemen to 
 swim. He had now become the associate of Britain's 
 really great men — the opposition of that day — the va- 
 ried but formidable array of the friends of Chatham 
 and Rockingham. He was examined before the House 
 
46 
 
 of Commons, insulted at the Privy Council, saw the 
 enactment and the repeal of the Stamp Act, and re- 
 mained in England till every chance of peaceful re- 
 dress being over, the time was come for him to return 
 to suffer and counsel with his countrymen at home. 
 
 Franklin returned to America in 1776, and just be- 
 fore he set out on, as he thought, his last voyage, then 
 an old man of nearly seventy years, he wrote from 
 London to his son, " I have, of late, great doubts 
 whether I shall continue here any longer. I grow 
 homesick, and being now in my sixty-seventh year, I 
 begin to apprehend some infirmity of age may attack 
 me, and make my return impracticable. I have, also, 
 some important affairs to settle before my death, a 
 period, I ought now to think, cannot be far distant." 
 We often read of the frustration of plans founded on 
 calculations of long life — but here, in the case of Dr. 
 Franklin, the progress of natural decline, of age itself, 
 seems to have been arrested, and all the great events 
 of his life, his permanent public services, were ren- 
 dered after he was self-condemned as unfit to work at 
 all. After he was seventy, he signed the Declaration 
 of Independence, framed, or aided in framing the first 
 constitution of Pennsylvania, again crossed the Atlan- 
 tic, and was an actor in the politics of Continental 
 Europe, negotiated the alliance with France, signed 
 the Definitive Treaty of Peace with Great Britain, 
 returned home eighty years of age, was elected, and 
 
47 
 
 for several years served as Governor of Pennsylvania, 
 and at last put his name and gave his hearty approval 
 to the Federal Constitution which has made us one 
 Nation. 
 
 This too is a Pennsylvania career that has yet to be 
 written, and this, with William Penn's, I repeat, would 
 cover the whole period of the Commonwealth's histo- 
 rical existence. It is a discredit to Pennsylvania, to 
 her men of talent and scholarship, that the only tole- 
 rable biographies of either have been written in New 
 England, where William Penn never put his foot, and 
 which Franklin abandoned almost when a child. Is 
 it because these are Pennsylvania subjects ? Is ^t be- 
 cause these were Philadelphia men that they are 
 thrown aside and neglected ? 
 
 I am admonished, by a variety of considerations, 
 that it is time to bring to a close this rambling, con- 
 versational sort of address, — for such I have meant it 
 to be. My object has been to show, by a series of ca- 
 sual and hardly coherent illustrations, what materials 
 the American historical student has to work upon, 
 where he must look for them, where he will find them, 
 and what aid a Society like this, properly administered, 
 may render him. We have disclaimed those solicita- 
 tions for pecuniary aid which might discredit us, and 
 turn indifference, which we are used to, into aversion. 
 A beggar society is worse than a beggar man. But 
 we solicit public favour in another form. We ask co- 
 
4S 
 
 operation and companionship. Having this, we trust 
 that the time may come when a new turn will be given 
 to public taste, when history, our own history, shall be 
 systematically taught, and when the American man of 
 intelligence and imagination, will find in its records 
 much to interest him. 
 
 My appeal for local history is now made — earnestly, 
 anxiously, honestly made. There is in my mind an 
 abiding conviction, growing in influence every year I 
 live, that it is a wholesome, invigorating study. That 
 it strengthens genuine patriotism, and chokes the 
 growth of spurious sentiment. That knowledge of 
 early American history is the true conservative 
 study. That it alone creates and keeps active the 
 virtue of loyalty out of the very name of which Re- 
 publics have been cheated. That its contrasts show 
 us the errors, the follies, the faults of our own day on 
 the one hand, and our superiority, — brighter prospects, 
 and higher aims on the other. That honestly studied, 
 it makes us rationally sanguine of the future, — because 
 proud of the past. Feeling all this, it is with me a 
 labour of love to try to make others, my fellow-country- 
 men, my fellow-citizens, (for I am proud of strong local 
 sympathies,) feel and think as I do. I cannot but hope, 
 that the appeal to-night will not be utterly in vain. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 THE GRANT TO WILLIAM TENN. 
 
 The following mutilated paper, being Penn's petition a^^ executor 
 of his fathci-, and the other minutes, will be found in the printed 
 Record or Paper-Book in the case of Penn vs. Lord Baltimore. A 
 copy of this record is in the city, in the possession of Thomas 
 (rilpin, Esquire. 
 
 " For tjie 
 The Humble ad 
 Son to Sir W 
 Sheweth, 
 
 That having 
 In Ireland by the oppression of the Lord 
 decease (though most of it remitted by 
 to borrow every penny of it, by reason 
 England was under the stop of the Ex 
 with the growing interest of it, and 9 Ye 
 for the relief of his own, and his Mother's 
 Ruine. He humbly prays that 
 
 that Princely respect he of 
 his compassion to the afflicte 
 America lying North of M 
 7 
 
60 
 
 River, on the West, linimit 
 extend as far as plantable, 
 he doubts not by his Intere 
 profitable plantation to the 
 to raise that speedy and sufficient 
 Incumbrances, that he may 
 Debt of, at least 11,000£ and be 
 and Time as shall be most 
 And 
 
 The foregoing imperfect paper (one-half of it being worn away) 
 remains in the books at the Board of Trade, is spoken to by Mr. 
 Gellibrand, as Mr. Penn's original petition fbr a grant of Pennsyl- 
 vania. 
 
 1680, June 14th. In the Council Chamber, Monday, the 14th of 
 June, 1680. Present Lord President, Duke of Albemarle, Bishop 
 of London, Mr. Secretary Jenkins, Sir T. Chichley. The Petition 
 of William Penn, referred by an order from the Earl of Sunderland 
 of the first instant, is read, praying, in Consideration of Debts due 
 to him, or his Father, from the Crown, to grant him Letters Patent 
 for a tract of Land in America, Lying North of Maryland, on the 
 East bounded with Delaware River, on the West limited as Mary- 
 land, and Northward to extend as far as Plantable. Whereupon, 
 Mr. Penn is called in, and being asked, what extent of Land he will 
 be contented with Northerly 1 declares himself satisfied with three 
 degrees to the Northwards ; and that he is willing, in lieu of such a 
 Grant, to remit his debt, due to him from his Majesty, or some part of 
 it, and to stay for the Remainder till his Majesty shall be in a better 
 condition to satisfy it : Upon the Whole matter, it is ordered, that 
 Copies of his Petition be sent unto Sir John Werden, in behalf of his 
 Royal Highness, and unto the Agents of the Lord Baltemore, to the 
 end they may report how far the pretensions of Mr. Penn may con- 
 
51 
 
 sist with the Boundaries of Maryland, or the Duke's propriety of New- 
 York and his possessions in those parts. This Exhibit is proved by 
 Mr. Gellibrand, 
 
 1680. Oct. 16. For my Honored Friend William Blaythwaite, 
 Esq ; Secretary to the Right Honorable the Lords Commissioners for 
 Trade and foreign Plantations at Whitehall. Whitehall, 16th Oct. 
 (80). Sir, you heretofore wrote to me, touching Mr. William Penn's 
 petition, then before the right Honorable the Lords Commissioners for 
 trade and Foreign Plantations ; To which I answered you, as at that 
 Time I was obliged to do. Since then, Mr. Penn hath represented 
 to the Duke his Case and Circumstances (in relation to the reasons 
 he hath to expect favor from His Majesty touching that request of 
 His) to be such, as that his Royal Highness commands me to let you 
 know (in order to your informing their Lordships of it) That he is 
 very willing Mr. Penn's request may meet with Success ; that is, 
 That he may have a Grant of that Tract of Land which lies on the 
 North of New Castle Colony (Part of Delaware) and on the West 
 Side of Delaware River, beginning about the Latitude of 40 Degrees, 
 and extending Northwards and Westward as far as his Majesty 
 pleaseth, under such regulations as their Lordships shall think fit. 
 
 I am, Sir, Your Very Humble Servant, Jo. Werden. This is 
 
 proved by Mr. Gellebrand." 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 0014311 112 A