By conventional accounts, the Quakers–industrious, lower middle-class, equalitarian, and persecuted for their mystical religious beliefs–fled the oppressive government of a corrupt English society for the freedom and purity of a New World wilderness. Social visionaries they projected a Quaker dominion between the already established colonies of New York and Maryland. Emerging as their leader was William Penn, a towering figure who dreamed of a new breed of Christians, transplanted across the water and restored to Apostolic purity. Like John Winthrop’s ‘citty [sic] upon a hill’ of a half-century before, Penn’s ‘holy experiment’ has been taken as illustrative of the seventeenth-century search among enlightened Englishmen for a better social order [99] Gary B. Nash, Quakers and Politics,1681-1726 (Northeastern University Press, 1968), p. xv.
While the tale told in this chapter will include this almost romantic quest for a new world enlightenment paradise, our purposes, and the bulk of the story, describes the fate of this holy experiment over the next ninety years or so from its founding in 1681-2. That story departs rather markedly from Winthrop’s Massachusetts story detailed in our next chapter–and it scarcely bears resemblance to Virginia’s outlined in the past chapter. Accordingly our second state under discussion will follow its own path, from its birth to the American Revolution; supporting our contention that from their beginning our American states were different, and as their “twig was bent” in this period, continued on in their differences to this very day. Similarities to be sure, but from 1681 to the present, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia were not then, and are not now, Massachusetts and Boston, nor Virginia or Norfolk.
What I expect the reader will discover in this chapter is a core impression that Penn’s colony failed as a government, and totally succeeded as a prosperous, distinctive economic base that supported the largest urban center in the thirteen colonies, Philadelphia, and served as the port of entry for the two largest immigrations into colonial North America. Its failures as government were colossal, seriously impeding its ability to lead America into its vast trans-Appalachian hinterland, but simultaneously serving as a foundation for America’s future industrial economy. This seemingly mixed performance, can in good measure be attributed to its distinctive political culture (the Quaker-Midlands), that as evolved through the years, has arguably grown to be in contention for America’s largest single political culture in contemporary political life. That political culture did not provide fertile ground for government, but it sure did fertilize individualism, privatism, entrepreneurship–and private family-based community-minded households.
The principal task of this chapter is to explain why and how Pennsylvania’s Holy Experiment government failed. Penn, the reader shall see, and his family bears a great deal of the blame for that. But that burden is lessened by the reality he too was Quaker, and the same personality/values/attitudes that made him and his offspring rather poor politicians and administrators, ran ruin over the population attracted to reside in his colony, making it, by almost everyone’s agreement, virtually ungovernable. Remarkably, as the reader will discover, as near to failure as a government can be, it endured through to the American Revolution in 1776. It even failed at failing. The bypasses it developed along the way, the structural and policy processes it created, the tilt to sub-state policy-making, and its reliance on either political bosses or private leaders riding a white horse arriving in the nick of time.
Its bimodal political culture which tosses its politics between an urbanized electoral base and a populist, to the point of radical hinterland anti governmentalism, has made it a bell-weather in national politics–and further supported its remarkable resilient, democratic, if incredibly inefficient and fragmented, sub-state policy-administrative stable governance. Well-run Pennsylvania may not be; but democratically and often “deplorably” run it has been. Perhaps the most obvious factors in this benevolent dysfunction has been the weakness, sub-state decentralization, its fragmentation of its political structures/institutions which disperse/diffuse political decision-making, its distinctive Midlands political culture, and its oft-times awkward historical bias to political bosses/machine-like regimes, and its privatism, a amazingly persistent and periodically strong role played by its private business sector.
In this topic-area I offer a partial explanation for Pennsylvania’s unique path to the present day. I argue that Penn’s Colonial Policy System was deficient from its birth, still-born almost, and the heritage and experience with that near-failed policy system (which continued for nearly ninety years) was inherited by the Articles of Confederation American state, and then adjusted to the 1789 Early Republic and Constitution.
Now long since “built in and forgotten” that experience, heritage, and lineage of political structures and institutions has shaped, almost invisibly, the structures, institutions, and political behavior of contemporary Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. I label this invisible phenomenon “imbedded historical relevance”. Understanding the centrality of Imbedded historical relevance, these unseen foundational pillars to our contemporary policy-making now buried in history, may be the single most important benefit from reading this history.
This Pennsylvania chapter will not be easily confused with Virginia’s–nor with Massachusetts to follow.
In any event, freed largely from a micro-managing government, colonial Pennsylvania private elites prospered, and over its history have been consistently willing to lend a helping hand to government when needed. And for the most part, government has returned the favor. Economic development policy has been affected by all this–how could it not? Pennsylvania/Philadelphia developed powerful strategies associated with Mainstream “capitalist” economic development.
But on the other hand, private leaders have been early advocates for colonial community development initiatives and movements. American abolitionism was born in Pennsylvania–a slave holding state under William Penn. The immigrant ethnic and racial communities which have resided in Pennsylvania have also supported their forms of community development–and provided a base for Mainstream entrepreneurism and a stable hardworking labor force. Private elites in government have played a significant role in this policy-making, and in contradiction to Sam Bass Warner’s notion of privatism, Pennsylvania/Philadelphia ED has been more small “d” democratic and people-driven than his hero, Yankee-Boston privatism.
Enough of setting the stage and imparting insights into the plot. Let’s get to work and start explaining why Pennsylvania’s approach to government was not successful.
Penn’s Not-so-Holy Experiment: Governance, Marketing and Real Estate: Quaker First Purchasers
Let’s get right to the point. Pennsylvania was a colony in the New World founded by a land grant from King James II of England to Quaker William Penn in 1681. New York, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, three separate colonies in New England and South Carolina all were founded previously. Pennsylvania was a sole proprietor colony, a personal possession of its proprietor, a form of American colonization that was on its way out in 1681. William Penn could write his own “constitution” for this colony, and so long as he followed along the lines of the English system of government, law, and colonial economic policy, Penn could write in it what he may. While Penn was democratically predisposed, and his Quakerism absolutely compelled him to include a sort of “bill of rights” centered on religious freedom and toleration–a requirement of the Quaker political culture–1681 is a bit early to talk of a democracy with which we are familiar today.
In 1681 we are only thirty-two years separated from Charles I having his head cut off, and only twenty-three years from Cromwell’s death. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations was almost ninety years in the future, as was the American Revolution. When Penn got his charter and assembled his ideas on what Pennsylvania, economy and polity, would be, he had more to consider than our textbook fabrications of Quakers as fleeing from religious persecution to found a colony centered on religious toleration and individual liberty. Penn’s colony was a lot more complicated and complex than that–however, important those values were.
In this module I focus on Penn’s concepts of political governance, his constitution, and in so doing I have to explain and deal with his very awkward and tension-filled distinction between his personal proprietary and the structures and institutions of representative “democracy”. That gap between the two may be the single most important factor in the evolution of Pennsylvania’s political history. At least I think so.
To the point: Penn created a “constitution” that did not work–but it lasted for the entire of Pennsylvania’s colonial history. In the paragraphs of this module we will discuss that constitution, his “Frames”, and elaborate on its failure to present a solid foundation for Pennsylvania’s political development, and almost left, by default, the development of its economic-base to the private sector. Without reading this module, the reader will not likely fully appreciated the thousands of Pennsylvania modules that lie ahead in this history. After all, if one asserts that Pennsylvania developed along lines caused by the failures of its initial constitution, it would seem logical we must spend some time understanding how the “birth” of Pennsylvania went awry.
It is wise to keep in mind that Penn received his Pennsylvania charter from the King in March 1681. The first Quaker ship sailed for Pennsylvania in October, 1681. Penn himself left in August 26, 1682 and arrived on October 27th. Between March 1681 and August 1682, in England, Penn planned, marketed, and developed his governance constitution, fiscal budget and allocated from his personal funds and other proceeds, the capital investment in foods, basic equipment and materials needed for initial subsistence (in winter), purchase of land from Native Americans, and initial city-building, homesteading and payroll. In that time period he circulated drafts of his proposed governance to a largely, if not exclusively, Quaker elite-friends. He called them his “Frame”.
His Frame went through seventeen drafts and was sent to a number of individuals. Gary Nash’s Quakers and Politics [99] Gary B. Nash, Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania, 1681-7126 (Northeastern University Press, 1968, 1993), pp. 28-47. examines these drafts and the reaction to them. From that we are left with what appears to be an initial very liberal democratic/ representative conception of Pennsylvania governance which, without explanation, shifted to the much more rigid, proprietary dominance over the proposed Pennsylvania policy system.
Penn starts out democratic and winds up with a hodge-podge that rests upon a dominant personal proprietary Executive Branch and a powerless appendage called the Legislature. The Judiciary, in the character of the times, is mostly within the Executive Branch. “… at some point in the early months of 1682, Penn reverted to a far less liberal scheme of government (p. 39).
The reaction to this shift seem consistent: readers were not onboard, in fact many expressed outright opposition. Hence previous to his English departure Penn was made aware that his Quaker constituency envisioned a lot more democracy and a lot less proprietor/proprietary. He likely made an error in judgement, believing his Quaker constituency would tolerate stronger proprietary so long as religious freedom, individual property and dissent were not threatened. His Forty Laws were his counter to that. Interestingly, one can see little thought devoted to non-Quaker citizenry. In this instance his devotion to his Holy Experiment may have shield him from the implications of a diverse community, with different goals/expectations, cultures and value systems.
Both Nash and I admit a change was obvious, but the motivation was not confirmed explicitly by Penn in his writings. My best guess is during this intensive period of planning, Penn engaged in very serious fiscal and budgetary planning; after all his money was “first in”. There is no evidence of which I am aware that Penn ever regarded the Holy Experiment as a purely philanthropic venture. Nash seems to offer some support to my hypothesis.
Nash notes that something like this likely occurred. He quotes William Markham, Penn’s deputy governor and later close friend and key proprietary official, “I knew it very well (the Frame of Government) was forced upon him by friends who unless they received all that they demanded would not settle the country” (p. 29).
Nash further observes, and I concur, “it was to be expected that men prepared to invest heavily in Pennsylvania, and especially those who were transferring their fortunes to the province, should demand, a voice in constructing the framework of government, just as they had expected special concession in the allocation of land, and first consideration in the distribution of profitable offices. The absence of conclusive evidence leaves any hypothesis open to question, but there are strong indications that Penn’s circle of backers caused him to deviate markedly from his own ideas on government in favor of a system more to their liking and advantage. At the same time … Penn seems to have taken a second hard look at the experiment he was promoting, and to have sought powers as proprietor and governor that earlier he might have considered extreme“. [p. 29].
Penn always was consistent in that he expected the colony to generate revenues that paid for its expenses–plus generating a profit for him and his family in accordance with his “to the manor-born expectation. The fiscal reality he not doubt encountered in this period, impressed upon him the need for his own “business plan” that would ensure not only the colony’s sustainability, but his own as well.
In the initial years his marketing efforts attracted not only “people” looking to participate in his wilderness experiment, but investors who would both settle in Pennsylvania and purchase land for him. His budget identified a need for 10,000 pounds–a considerable sum, and a sum beyond Penn’s personal liquidity.
Rather quickly, I suspect, he attached the Forty Laws, signed a number of real estate contracts in which governance and bill of rights issues were included, and eventually a joint stock corporation, the Society of Free Traders was formed, a corporation which included as members those who purchased the largest parcels of land from him (he called them in his corporation “First Purchasers” with whom he had entered into a mutual venture).
The Society Corporation was entrusted with significant autonomous economic and political powers as well as intended to be the governance of the proposed capitol city, Philadelphia, It was tasked with installing the economic base of the colony, and its members were well placed to receive the financial benefits of the “cluster-sector” monopolies it would operate.
I suspect Penn wrote his Frames with his affluent First Purchasers in mind, and since the First Purchasers had membership in the joint stock corporation, the Society, the Frame were mostly intended to govern the non-urban hinterland–where Penn contemplated as the long-term settlement financing required to pay his bills and make a profit. In the hinterland, Penn’s vision was far more real estate and fiscal budgeting than Holy Experiment or an exercise in being the cutting edge of Whig democracy. His Frame, and the role of the proprietary in them was after these additions, only one element of a package. If there were concerns with the Frames, there were compensating agreements which, he believed, would alleviate their concerns.
As we shall see, if my supposition is correct, that distinction broke down broke down at arrival, and the Society was essential rejected and a modified vastly less powerful political entity held sway over an abbreviated Philadelphia. His First Purchasers also had substantial hinterland land holdings, and his backlog of sales prospects were for hinterland geographies. Hinterland governance was more important than Penn envisioned in England.
In any event, Penn went ahead with his version of the Frame–finishing it up onboard during his passage across the Atlantic. When he land the package was ready to be submitted to the Legislature envisioned in his Frame. The pressure of events, his crowded agenda, and the time necessary to install the “Frame” and lay the groundwork and conduct the elections for its members, consumed six months from his landing.
In short, the fusion of government, finance, settlement marketing land sales, and an elite that purchased fifty percent of the initial land sales may well have led to the chaos in governance that followed Penn’s landing–and the governance of the colony to the American Revolution.
Penn’s Proprietary and Penn’s Frame Have a Rough Landing
Penn (and his successors) were endowed with the powers of a sole proprietary colony, which as far as Charles II expected would include the recreation of the manor, aristocratic, feudal economy, society and lifestyle as had been installed in Berkeley’s Virginia. The colony was the personal property of the Penn family: “the True and Absolute Proprietary of Pennsylvania“. Penn’s shift to a more “feudal” political base would not have stirred the King into action against the Frame of Penn’s Proprietary.
Penn was to be the royal governor of that colony, and to Penn, and those he included in his largesse, was the right to whatever wealth and property that colony could create, including taxes (quit-rents). England itself had evolved early forms of modern democracy, Parliament, election franchises, and most importantly English common law, all of which checked aristocratic control by endowing the English citizen with the right to property, trial by jury of peers–and a good deal of restraint for individualism and individual action.
In very short order further developments in Great Britain, the Glorious Revolution of 1689, and the shocking 1689 Declaration of Rights, and the 1690 John Locke’s Treatises on Government were clear indications the tenor of English politics at the time of Penn’s founding of Pennsylvania was not moving back to medieval feudalism–no matter what Charles II intended. The same could be said of its revolutionary economic base in embryo. Penn started his colony under one royalist policy system, and in less than a decade, it started leaving that behind and moving into a oligarchic, Parliamentarian mercantilist British (as opposed to English) empire. Penn’s political timing was not his best strength.
Penn did not intend to revitalize English medieval feudalism–but he didn’t intend to abandon it either. His conception of the policy system included new English forms of democracy accompanied by his Quaker religious and political toleration–as well as permitting a limited number of manors with English aristocratic endowments. Penn was reasonably in step with the times, but was somewhat out of step with his divided Quaker constituency.
Accordingly, in England, in consultation with merchant Quaker elites, he fabricated his “constitution”, he called them Frames. He seems to have finished the job while suffering from a rather rough crossing of the Atlantic. He was founding a new community, city, and religious haven-colony, and it will become apparent, Penn lacked his degree in political science or public administration, and wrote his constitution envisioning that his principal political community were those who bought Pennsylvania land from him.
Nevertheless, as Penn devised his framework for Pennsylvania governance, before he had even step foot on the boat that carried him to North America, that framework (which itself underwent ten revisions before it was applied) was quickly rejected and substantially modified within a year after his arrival in the Delaware Valley–not by him, but by the Pennsylvania legislature Penn created.
Further modifications occurred over the next decade as well. In this module, therefore, we shall briefly look at Penn’s political and governance wish list, but will move on to outline the reaction to it. He was still sufficiently medieval in his perspective, despite some Whig inclinations when useful, that land was the unit on which he based his policy system and economic base. Land was how you “paid and played”. In short, the Holy Experiment was also a real estate venture.
The Initial Penn Frame
Penn’s first taste of colony-development and governance was in “West” New Jersey (1764) at the behest of Quakers attempting to establish communities and a Quaker colony along the New Jersey side of the Delaware River. His interest in the new world had been at least in part triggered by that of his religious leader, George Fox, the founder of Quakerism. Fox in his missionary work had traveled to the new world, and in his religious mission travel a good deal–as far as Maryland from the Carolinas. His conversations with Native Americans went well, and both sides got off to a good start with a level of, if not trust, a sense of his good intentions. The Quaker movement under Fox was aggressively missionary–to western Europe as well as North America and West Indies. The persecution of Quakers had land a good number in English jails (Penn himself spent time in jail), and the seeds of Penn’s future Holy Experiment were planted by Fox himself, and in return Fox was a shareholder in Penn’s future venture.
Hence, one should appreciate that Quaker colonialization always fused the establishment of a religious haven abroad with the mechanics of actually establishing a colony–legal titles, charters, marketing, logistics, financing, and sustainability of its fiscal and economic viability. It also included the various activities associated with managing a land development corporation and hacking a new community in the wilderness. Blurry-eyed intensely religious missionaries they might have been, Quaker leadership had experience in legal, fiscal and economic matters–it was politics and people getting along with each other that they were still remarkably innocent.
Penn’s West Jersey involvement was at first legal and focused on estate management. He became a trustee (director on the board of directors) in the joint stock land development company that formed to receive the title and charter for “west” New Jersey venture upon its receipt of a charter from the Duke of York for a province. From his work, in England, Penn developed his own ideas for his own “Holy Experiment”, and he set his eyes of the other shore of the Delaware River. His connections at the royal court were excellent, and he benefited from the devotion to his father, and in the end, after his father’s death, the King was convinced to issue a charter for Pennsylvania to pay for loans his father had made him. The King’s charter did include Pennsylvania under the provisions of the Navigation Acts, allowed the King to send his agents to inspect and protect his position, and to require approval of the Privy Council in London within five years of their passage in Pennsylvania. Still the Pennsylvania sole proprietor colony was personal, its lands and governance, left in the hands of one individual–not a corporate board or joint stock corporation–whose governance and administration was expected to be congruent with his own private (religious) and personal goals. In the body and mind of William Penn, public and private interests were blurred and blended.
Despite, the passage of the first Navigation Acts in 1675, Penn was able to secure a sole proprietary charter which granted to Penn (and descendants) personally “free, full and absolute power … to ordeyne, make, Enact, and under his and their Seales to publish any Lawes whatsoever … by, and with the advice, assent and approbation of the freemen of said country, … as well as such power and authoritie to appoint and establish any Judges, and Justices, Magistrates and officers whatsoever” [99] Drawn from the Pennsylvania charter and cited by Joseph P. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: a History (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), p. 12. Planted in the charter was an inherent tension between Penn’s near absolute right to establish the institutions and practices of government policy-making, particularly stressing his absolute power of appointment but which also included ascertaining the advice, assent and approbation of Pennsylvania’s freemen–i.e. determining the nature and specifics of local self-determination and democratic participation.
A masterful and creative political mind and personality might have squared that circle, but Penn possessed neither. This is the specific flaw that I believed damned Penn’s sole proprietorship to ninety plus years of ineffective government structure and political hell. It is this “quirk” that caused Pennsylvania’s colonial experience, and the State of Pennsylvania’s inherited legacy to develop along distinctive lines different from other colonies. To be sure there will be other factors that will come into play, but to this one inherent structural tension, a great deal of Pennsylvania’s distinctiveness will follow. “Penn was no democrat. But he was devoted to the contract theory of government … Penn believed that the contract between citizen and government guaranteed the former personal freedom and the protection of his property, as well as participation in government, and trial by jury. Justice was to be mutual, fair and proportionate to the crime. Of these axioms the one which stood in clearest contrast to the principles which Massachusetts operated was individual liberty. From this sprang Penn’s defense of dissent … an integral part of personal freedom, a civil right [99]Joseph P. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: a History, p. 14.
From Penn’s sense of Hobbesian contract with the people, Penn would devise a government to which freemen could elect representatives, but whose wishes and needs could be ignored or rejected by the sole proprietor or his appointed officials. The courts on the other hand would protect individual liberty and dissent, and serve as guardians to a mutual, fair and proportionate justice, without the authority to compel the sole proprietor to honor. Likewise, the institutions of government could not enjoy recourse to the courts against the proprietor. There was no arbiter independent judiciary, nor did the legislature enjoy any powers not delegated to it by by the sole proprietor. Yet, given Penn’s strong Quaker beliefs, his compact with his settlers had to include certain “bill of rights” which Penn affirmed in his Forty Laws, which was attached to his “constitutional” Frame of Governance. The Forty Laws could each be repealed by six-sevenths of the both houses of the legislature–OR by the Privy Council in London
The Forty Laws guaranteed the right to worship “to all who believed in God”, protection of personal property under the law, children must be taught trades, taxes must be “levied solely by law”, prisons must be workhouses (This is a liberal/humane right congruent with reform in England), and personal debts had to be paid. In these Forty Laws we see individual and religious rights not found in any other colony, or in England; these individual rights permitted development of a future capitalist economy, and a government tilted to humanistic, enlightenment reform (if it could only act independently). The tension of any of these rights, with the sole proprietary near-dictatorship, however, would naturally grate on the individual citizen-resident, as would the conjunction/blurring of the colony’s public goals and purposes with those of the private sole proprietor–for example Penn’s owned lands could not be taxed by the legislature while the individual citizen’s was.
Penn’s aspirations for Pennsylvania’s provincial government were outlined in his “Frame of Government”–again written in England by Penn, in consultation with several merchant friends there were seventeen drafts, and completed in his passage across the Atlantic. The Frame empowered the sole proprietor (and successors) as if they were a royal governor. The Governor (in charge of Executive Branch) and the Provincial Council would manage the Treasury, appoint and staff the courts (which are the chief body, a fused legislative-judicial institution, was the core of Penn’s sub-provincial county and town governance. The “judges” (who were both legislative and judicial in function) in these bodies were appointed by the Governor from a list approved by a freeman vote. Penn himself was the sole proprietor and governor simultaneously. If he so desired, he could delegate those powers to a Deputy Governor, to act in his absence. Calling for a two-chamber legislature, the upper house, the seventy-two member Provincial Council, was more powerful and central to the legislative function. One-third of the Provincial Council was to be annually elected by freemen–the others appointed by the Proprietor/Governor. The Governor would preside over the upper chamber Provincial Council, and he enjoyed to exclusive ability to introduce all legislation. The Provincial Council was to oversee the execution of laws by the Governor.
The 200 delegate lower house, the Assembly could offer amendments, and disapprove of proposed legislation. The Assembly was composed totally of freeman elected delegates, and was therefore the chief representative body of the province. The Assembly also was empowered to be “the judge” of the eligibility of its membership so that it could not be “packed” by either Governor or King. The freeman electoral franchise was Christian males over twenty-one who owned at least 100 acres by personal purchase, or 50 acres as a payment at termination of indenture contract. The same qualifications held for officeholders. Illick asserts this probably comprised about half of Penn’s first settlers, and compares very favorably with franchise numbers in Massachusetts. Interesting Illick also states that Penn believed his Quaker constituency “was not concerned with “governmental features of Pennsylvania so long as the system was representative, and a more important freedom of worship was guaranteed”. In this reference we can see how the anti-political, non government attitudinal consensus within the Quaker culture may have permeated into Penn’s thoughts about Pennsylvania governance. In this perception, one can argue he was both correct and totally wrong [99] Joseph P. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: a History, p. 14, pp. 19-20.
Viewed from a contemporary perspective, this is a sham democracy, but in 1681 it was symmetric with the gold standard for what was considered a democracy at the time, James Harrington’s Oceana. Nine years later (1690), Locke published his Civil Government which advocated for separation of powers (defusing the legislative-judicial functions found in the English local “court” government. As Penn already had embraced, in his fashion, the Hobbesian compact theory of government with his legislature of freemen, and combined with a de facto “bill of rights” Forty Laws his Frame was a not unreasonable reflection of “democracy in 1681. The Frame did depart from Oceana in one significant aspect. Harrington advocated breaking up the landed aristocracy (and their manors) believing that democracy was only compatible with small scale land ownership held by a larger diffused population.
Penn, probably consciously, rejected that key reform. No doubt in large measure because his plan for Pennsylvania settlement, and his quest for his own personal real estate profits, rested on sale of Pennsylvania land in large bl0cs–although Penn did contemplate smaller household sales as well. Penn himself contemplated construction of his own manor-estate (which he commenced quickly upon landing), and fully expected many of his First Purchasers (see below) to do the same. It would seem that where democracy directly conflicted with his real estate venture, the former was curtailed. Here we see the overlap of the old feudal land-based aristocratic system into the new more democratic Frame policy system. Moreover, that feudal extension was personified in the sole proprietor, who could create, as Berkeley did in Virginia, feudal-style manors/plantations in his new colony. [BTW, Virginia’s Berkeley was Penn’s cousin, and the two knew each other well].
In any event, Penn in congruence with his democratic compact approach to government held off the approval of his Frame until he could “settle into Pennsylvania”, hold elections and seat the first legislature–which would be a year later in early 1683. However, in 1682, he did convene a “consultation group” composed of representatives from the three lower and three upper counties of Pennsylvania. To them he submitted his Frame, the Forty Laws, and about fifty odd pieces of legislation of immediate interest/need. That generated a brew-ha-ha in which nineteen items were rejected, and any decision on the Frame an Forty were deferred to the elected Legislature. While we will have more to say on the 1683 Legislative reaction later, Penn thinking better at the Frame’s huge numbers of delegates, reduced both chambers by half, and with the elections duly held, the Legislature met for the first time in March 1683.
Well, all hell broke out there as well. The honest qualification is the delegates were not a majority of Quakers, lower county Swedes, as well as Anglicans in both sets of counties piled on Penn for all aggravations and opposition developed over the previous two years. The context of these profound concerns will be discussed in the sections below. The extended session debated the Frame, the Forty and the Society for Free Traders, and over the course of the debate, Penn compiled a compromise Second Frame, which preserved the essentials of his First Frame, but did check his ability to exclusively introduce legislation by empowering the Provincial Council to advise and consent on it.
The Assembly, for its own reasons, found this acceptable in 1683–but that consensus rapidly dissipated and the original concern that it be permitted to introduce legislation (and other concerns as well) reappeared. Penn’s amended Second Frame did come out of the onslaught, and as amended Penn’s Frame was put in place over the next year. Before leaving Pennsylvania in 1684, Penn conceded one additional change: Penn delegated to the Provincial Council to appoint its own members, apart from the one-third elected annually. Obviously, this further expanded the powers of the upper house, which with Penn absentee, was filled with his supporters and together with his Deputy Governor and the appointed Executive Branch sub-provincial system marginalized the Assembly to the point that by 1684 it was opposed in concept and daily practice to the Frames. We will complete this discussion shortly, but first we must consider how the first year of Pennsylvania/Philadelphia’s settlement created issues and concerns that permeated 1683 discussions on the Frame.
Ron W. Coan 