How the King Paid his Debts.-He had inherited from his father, Admiral Penn, a claim on the government for sixteen thousand pounds. This he was not likely to get in money, so he asked the king, Charles II., who was his personal friend, to pay him by a grant of land in America. The king willingly complied, glad to get rid of his debt so easily, and Penn became proprietor in 1681 of a tract of forty-eight thousand square miles of wilderness lying west of the Delaware River. This the king named Pennsylvania, or "Penn's Woodland." The Delaware territory, then claimed by the Duke of York, was granted by him to Penn, as a part of his American domain.

Penn's Charter.-The charter conveying Pennsylvania to William Penn was liberal in its provisions, but less so than in the case of the New England and Maryland charters. It required that the laws passed by the assembly should be approved by the king, and the British government retained the right to tax the province.

Emigration to Pennsylvania.-Emigrants were sent out immediately to the new province, nearly thirty vessels reaching there in the first year (1681). Some of the colo

of the Friends, and was expelled in consequence. He was sent by his father to Paris, where he became an accomplished man of the world. Afterward, however, though an intimate friend of the king and his brother, he became a Friend, so greatly displeasing his father that he was turned out of his home. He was several times imprisoned for his belief, but strongly asserted in the courts the principle of religious liberty, and travelled through parts of Europe preaching his faith. He became heir to a considerable fortune on the death of his father, but lost heavily through his colonizing experiment, and was eventually imprisoned for debt. He died in 1718.

In further return for his grant, Penn agreed to give the king annually two beaver-skins and one-fifth of all the gold and silver that were mined.

nists spent the winter at a Swedish settlement on the Delaware called Upland, since known as Chester. The site of a new city had already been chosen, on the tract of land between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, and the

city named and planned. It was named Philadelphia, a Bible name signifying " Brotherly Love." The streets were to be broad and to cross each other at right angles, and the principal ones to be named after the trees of the forest. Here many of the emigrants spent their first winter in holes dug in the river-bank for shelter.

Penn Seeks his Colony.-In 1682, Penn himself crossed the ocean in the ship Welcome, bringing with him a company of a hundred colonists of his own faith to found the city of Philadelphia. He first landed at New Castle, in the territory granted him by the Duke of York. Here he was presented with a piece of turf in which was a twig, to signify that the land and its products were his, and with a dish of water, to signify that he owned the river. Finally he was given the keys of the fort.

The Great Law.-Proceeding to Upland, which he named Chester, he called an assembly, and with its aid enacted the "Great Law," that by which the new colony was to be governed. The principal features of this law were the following:

Every man was free to worship God in what manner his conscience demanded, though only believers in Christ could vote or hold office.

The death penalty was restricted to two crimes, murder and treason.

Every prison was to be made a workshop and place of reformation, a distinctly new idea in prison management.

The people were to be free to make their own laws, with the understanding that they agreed to obey the laws they made.

The proprietor, or his deputy, the governor, was to preside over the assembly.

Treaty with the Indians.-Penn, despite the king's grant, did not feel that he owned the land till he had bought it of

its true proprietors. He made an amicable settlement with the few Swedes who occupied the site of Philadelphia, and purchased the Indian claim to the territory.

There is a tradition that he held a council with the Indians under a great elm-tree near the city. Here a treaty

of peace and good-will was made, presents were exchanged, and the Indians were paid for their land. No oath was taken. Each party trusted the word of the other. Yet the treaty was held sacred for the sixty years during which Quaker rule continued in Pennsylvania.1

Growth of the City.

-No other colony grew so rapidly as Pennsylvania. Settlers were attracted by the cheapness and fertility of the land, the free government, and the absence of persecution, and in a few years Pennsylvania became one of the most important

"It was the only treaty never sworn to and never broken," Voltaire has said. Though the Indians waged war with the colonies, they sought to shed no drop of Quaker blood. "We will live in love with William Penn and his children as long as the sun and moon shall shine," they said. The Indian record of the treaty is still preserved. It is a belt of wampum having on it the picture of a white man and an Indian clasping hands. The elm, under which tradition says the treaty took place, continued to stand in Kensington, the northeast section of the city, till 1810. It was then blown down, and its site is now marked by a monument and a small public park. While the British held Philadelphia during the Revolution a sentinel was stationed here to prevent the soldiers from cutting down the tree for firewood.

of the colonies. When Penn sailed for England in 1684 he left behind him a prosperous colony of seven thousand persons. Fifty townships had been settled and there were over three hundred houses in Philadelphia. Among the settlers was a company of Germans, who had bought a large tract of land. One of their first settlements on this was called Germantown (now a part of Philadelphia). Many Friends from Wales also came and settled north and west of the city. Penn's Troubles.-In 1692, Penn lost his province and was imprisoned, being suspected of sympathy with James II., then in exile, but it was restored to him in the following year. He came out again in 1699, finding the colony very prosperous, but the colonists eager for greater privileges. He therefore granted them a new and more liberal constitution, and reformed affairs in various directions. He returned to England in 1701. In after-years he had much trouble in regard to rents due from the settlers, and fell so heavily into debt that he was obliged to mortgage his province. For some time he was imprisoned for debt.

Worn out with these misfortunes, he was on the point of selling his province to the crown, when he was stricken with paralysis and became incapable of transacting business.

Later History.-Penn's sons inherited his province on his death in 1718. Their policy was much less just and liberal than his, and constant irritation succeeded. The disputes continued until the war of the Revolution, during which the State of Pennsylvania purchased the interest of