QUAKERS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17198, 19 June 1916, Page 9

QUAKERS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—lt would have been moro to tho point if .your correspondent ‘‘Briton” had spoken of “ flaws ” in tho human material which, in a succeeding generation, had tho theoric-s of William Penn at its mercy, rather than of “ flaws ” in tho theories themselves.

On his landing in America, the Quataf founder of Pennsylvania wrote to an Indian chief, saying: “The people who como with ir.o are a just, plain apcl honest people, that- neither malyO war upon others nor fear war from others, because they will be just.” What happened? President- Sharpless, an acknowledged authority on Pennsylvanian history, has described how a heterogeneous, immigrant population of •mans, Irish, Scotch and others swamp-' ed that minority of “plain, honest people,” and shaped anew the destiny of the State. Yet in 1739, somo sixty years after the lnndiug of Penn,. Speaker Hamilton, a liou-Quaker, was aldo to say: “It is not to the fertility of our soil that wo ought chiefly, to attribute the great progress proviuco has made; it is practically and almost wholly owing to the excellency of our Constitution.” Tho first clause in this, as in all Penn’s charters, decreed religious liberty to an extent unknown anywhere else in the - world blit in Rhcdo Island. “"It were better,” Penn said, “to be of no churoli than to be bitter for any.” j Penn’s faith was in justice, not in force of arms, and to what has faitlv in tho latter brought us to-day? Tho theories of Penn as well as tho ideals of Christianity havo yet to bo tried and found wanting. “Tjovc is tho hardest lesson in Christianity, hut for that reason it should be most our care to learn it,” wrote the- old Quaker. Tho lesson lias no n flaw,” the scholars 19 any. But we aro still learning.—t am, etc., SCRUTATOR..