"Such indeed was the spirit in which the negotiation was entered into, and the corresponding settlement concluded, that for the space of more than seventy years, and so long indeed as the Quakers retained the chief power in the government, the peace and amity were never violated; and a large and most striking, though solitary, example afforded of the facility with which they who are really sincere and friendly in their own views, may live in harmony with those who are supposed to be peculiarly fierce and faithless. We cannot bring ourselves to wish that there were nothing but Quakers in the world, because we fear it would be insupportably dull; but when we consider what tremendous evils daily arise from the petulance and profligacy, and ambition and irritability of sovereigns and ministers, we cannot help thinking it would be the most efficacious of all reforms to choose all those ruling personages out of that plain, pacific, and sober-minded sect."
There is no doubt that Penn may be declared the most perfect Christian statesman that ever lived. He had the sagacity to see that men, to be made trustworthy, need only to be treated as men;—that the doctrines of the New Testament were to be taken literally and fully; and he had the courage and honesty, in the face of all the world's practice and maxims, to confide in Christian truth. It fully justified him. What are the cunning and the so-called profound policy of the most subtle statesmen to this? This confidence, at which the statesmen of our own day would laugh as folly and simplicity, proved to be a reach of wisdom for beyond their narrow vision. But it is to be feared that the selfishness of govern-
