[Clips] Pennsylvania's Anarchist Experiment: 1681-1690

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 Visit the <http://blog.mises.org/>Mises Economics Blog.

 Pennsylvania's Anarchist Experiment: 1681-1690

 by Murray N. Rothbard

 <http://www.mises.org/story/1865>[Posted on Friday, July 08, 2005]

 [This essay, never before online, is from Rothbard's magisterial 4-volume
 history of the Colonial period of the United
 States, <http://www.mises.org/store/Conceived-in-Liberty--P96C0.aspx>Conceived
 in Liberty]

  In the vast stretches of America, William Penn envisaged a truly Quaker
 colony, "a Holy experiment...that an example may be set up to the nations."

 In his quest for such a charter, Penn was aided by the fact that the Crown
 had owed his father, Admiral Sir William Penn, the huge sum of 16,000
 pounds for loans and back salary. In March 1681 the king agreed to grant
 young William, the admiral's heir, proprietary ownership of the lands west
 of the Delaware River and north of the Maryland border in exchange for
 canceling the old debt.

 The land was to be called Pennsylvania.

 Penn was greatly aided in securing the charter by his friendship with the
 king and other high officials of the court. The proprietary charter was not
 quite as absolute as the colonial charters granted earlier in the century.
 The proprietor could rule only with the advice and consent of an assembly
 of freemena provision quite satisfactory to Penn. The Privy Council could
 veto Pennsylvania's actions, and the Crown, of course, could hear appeals
 from litigation in the colony. The Navigation Acts had to be enforced, and
 there was an ambiguous provision implying that England could impose taxes
 in Pennsylvania.

 As soon as Penn heard news of the charter, he dispatched his cousin William
 Markham to be deputy governor of Pennsylvania. The latter informed the five
 hundred or so Swedish and Dutch residents on the west bank of the Delaware
 of the new charter. In the fall Markham was succeeded by four
 commissioners, and they were succeeded by Thomas Holme as deputy governor
 in early 1682.

 In May William Penn made the Frame of Government the constitution for the
 colony. The Frame was amended and streamlined, and became the Second Frame
 of 1683, also called the Charter of Liberties. The Frame provided, first,
 for full religious freedom for all theists. No compulsory religion was to
 be enforced. The Quaker ideal of religious liberty was put into practice.
 Only Christians, however, were to be eligible for public office; later, at
 the insistence of the Crown, Catholics were barred from official posts in
 the colony.

 The government, as instituted by the Frame, comprised a governor, the
 proprietor; an elected Council, which performed executive and supreme
 judicial functions; and an Assembly, elected by the freeholders, Justices
 of lower courts were appointed by the governor. But while the Assembly,
 like those in other colonies, had the only power to levy taxes, its powers
 were more restricted than those of assemblies elsewhere. Only the Council
 could initiate laws, and the Assembly was confined to ratifying or vetoing
 the Council's proposals.

 William Penn himself arrived in America in the fall of 1682 to institute
 the new colony. He announced that the Duke's Laws would be temporarily in
 force and then called an Assembly for December. The Assembly included
 representatives not only of three counties of Pennsylvania, but also of the
 three lower counties of Delaware. For Delawareor New Castle and the lower
 counties on the west bank of Delaware Bayhad been secured from the Duke of
 York in August. While Penn's legal title to exercising governmental
 functions over Delaware was dubious, he pursued it boldly. William Penn now
 owned the entire west bank of the Delaware River.

 The Assembly confirmed the amended Frame of Government, including the
 declaration of religious liberty, and this code of laws constituted the
 "Great Law of Pennsylvania.' The three lower Delaware counties were placed
 under one administration, separate from Pennsylvania proper.

 Penn was anxious to promote settlement as rapidly as possible, both for
 religious (a haven to Quakers) and for economic (income for himself)
 reasons, Penn advertised the virtues of the new colony far and wide
 throughout Europe. Although he tried to impose quitrents and extracted
 selling prices for land, he disposed of the land at easy terms. The prices
 of land were cheap. Fifty acres were granted to each servant at the end of
 his term of service. Fifty acres also were given for each servant brought
 into the colony. Land sales were mainly in moderate-sized parcels. Penn
 soon found that at the rate of one shilling per hundred acres, quitrents
 were extremely difficult to collect from the settlers.

 Induced by religious liberty and relatively cheap land, settlers poured
 into Pennsylvania at a remarkably rapid rate, beginning in 1682. Most of
 the immigrants were Quakers; in addition to English Quakers came Welsh,
 Irish, and German Quakers, Penn laid out the capital, destined to become
 the great city of Philadelphia, and changed the name of the old Swedish
 settlement of Upland to Chester. The German Quakers, led by Francis Daniel
 Pastorius, founded Germantown, In addition to Quakers, there came other
 groups attracted by the promise of full religious liberty: German
 Lutherans, Catholics, Mennonites, and Huguenots. The growth of Pennsylvania
 was rapid: 3,000 immigrants arrived during this first year; by 1684 the
 population of Philadelphia was 2,500, and of Pennsylvania, 8,000. There
 were over 350 dwellings in Philadelphia by the end of 1683. By 1,689 there
 were over 12,000 people in Pennsylvania.

 One of William Penn's most notable achievements was to set a remarkable
 pattern of peace and justice with the Indians. In November 1682 Penn
 concluded the first of several treaties of peace and friendship with the
 Delaware Indians at Shackamaxon, near Philadelphia. The Quaker achievement
 of maintaining peace with the Indians for well over half a century has been
 disparaged; some have held that it applied to only the mild Delaware
 Indians, who were perpetually cowed by the fierce but pro-English Iroquois.
 But this surely accounts for only part of the story. For the Quakers not
 only insisted on voluntary purchase of land from the Indians; they also
 treated the Indians as human beings, as deserving of respect and dignity as
 anyone else. Hence they deserved to be treated with honesty, friendliness,
 and evenhanded justice. As a consequence, the Quakers were treated
 precisely the same way in return. No drop of Quaker blood was ever shed by
 the Indians. So strong was the mutual trust between the races that Quaker
 farmers unhesitatingly left their children in the care of the Indians.
 Originally, too, the law provided that whenever an Indian was involved in a
 trial, six whites and six Indians would constitute the jury.

 Voltaire, rapturous over the Quaker achievement, wittily and perceptively
 wrote that the Shackamaxon treaty was "the only treaty between Indians and
 Christians that was never sworn to and that was never broken." Voltaire
 went on to say that for the Indians "it was truly a new sight to see a
 sovereign [William Penn] to whom everyone said 'thou' and to whom one spoke
 with one's hat on one's head; a government without priests, a people
 without arms, citizens as equal as the magistrate, and neighbors without
 jealousy." Other features of the Assembly's early laws were Puritanical
 acts barring dramas, drunkenness, etc.

 More liberally, oaths were not required and the death penalty applied only
 to the crime of murder. Punishment was considered for purposes of reform.
 Feudal primogeniture was abolished. To make justice more efficient and
 informal, the government undertook to appoint three arbitrators in every
 precinct, to hand down decisions in disputes. The Quakers, however,
 unsatisfactorily evaded the problem of what to do about a military force.
 So as not to violate Quaker principle against beating arms, the Friends
 refused to serve in the militia, but they still maintained a militia in the
 province, and non-Quaker officials were appointed in command, But surely if
 armies are evil, then voting for taxes and for laws in support of the evil
 is serving that evil and therefore not to be condoned.

 On the question of free speech for criticizing government, laws were,
 unfortunately, passed prohibiting the writing or uttering of anything
 malicious, of anything stirring up dislike of the governor, or of anything
 tending to subvert the government.

 The tax burden was extremely light in Pennsylvania. The only tax laws were
 enacted in 1683; these placed a small duty on liquor and cider, a general
 duty on goods, and an export duty on bides and furs. But Governor Penn
 promptly set aside all taxes for a year to encourage settlers. In 1684,
 however, another bill to raise import and other duties for William Penn's
 personal use was tabled; instead, a group of leaders of Pennsylvania
 pointed out that the colony would progress much faster if there were no
 taxes to cripple trade. These men heroically promised to raise 500 pounds
 for Penn as a gift, if the tax bill were dropped. The tax bill was dropped,
 but not all the money raised.

 As might have been predicted, the first political conflict in Pennsylvania
 came as a protest against the curious provisions of the Frame restricting
 the Assembly to ratifying bills initiated by the Council. In the spring of
 1683, several assemblymen urged that the Assembly be granted the power to
 initiate legislation. Several of Penn's devotees attacked the request as
 that which seemed "to render him ingratitude for his goodness towards the
 people." The Assembly balked too at granting the governor veto power over
 itself. There are indications that the non-Quaker elements in the Assembly
 were particularly active in criticizing the great powers assumed by the
 governor and the Council. One of the leaders of the incipient opposition to
 Penn was the non-Quaker Nicholas More, Speaker of the Assembly in 1684. And
 Anthony Weston, apparently a non-Quaker, was publicly whipped on three
 successive days for his "presumption and contempt of this government and
 authority."

 Having founded the new colony and its government, and hearing of renewed
 persecution of Quaker at home, William Penn returned to England in the fall
 of 1684. He soon found his expectations of large proprietary profits from
 the vast royal grant to be in vain. For the people of the struggling young
 colony of Pennsylvania extended the principles of liberty far beyond what
 Penn was willing to allow. The free people of Pennsylvania would not vote
 for taxes, and simply would not pay the quitrents to Penn as feudal
 overlord. As a result, Penn's deficits in ruling Pennsylvania were large
 and his fortune dwindled steadily. In late 1685 Penn ordered the officials
 to use force to protect the monopoly of lime production that he had granted
 himself, in order to prevent others from opening lime quarries.

 As to quitrents, Penn, to encourage settlement, had granted a moratorium
 until 1685. The people insisted that payment be postponed another year, and
 Penn's threatened legal proceedings were without success. Penn was
 especially aggrieved that his agents in Pennsylvania failed to press his
 levies upon the people with sufficient zeal. Presumably, the free tax-less
 air of Pennsylvania had contaminated them. As Penn complained in the fall
 of 1686: "The great fault is, that those who are there lose their authority
 one way or another in the spirits of the people and then they can do little
 with their outward powers."

 After Penn returned to England in 1684, the Council virtually succeeded him
 in governing the colony. The Council assumed full executive powers, and,
 since it was elected rather than appointed, this left Pennsylvania as a
 virtually self-governing colony. Though Thomas Lloyd, a Welsh Quaker, had
 by Penn been appointed as president of the Council, the president had
 virtually no power and could make no decisions on his own. Because the
 Council met very infrequently, and because no officials had any power to
 act in the interim, during these intervals Pennsylvania had almost no
 government at alland seemed not to suffer from the experience. During the
 period from late 1684 to late 1688, there were no meetings of the Council
 from the end of October 1684 to the end of March 1685; none from November
 1686 to March 1687; and virtually none from May 1687 to late 1688. The
 councillors, for one thing, had little to do. And being private citizens
 rather than bureaucrats, and being unpaid as councillors, they had their
 own struggling businesses to attend to. There was no inclination under
 these conditions to dabble in political affairs. The laws had called for a
 small payment to the councillors, but, typically, it was found to be almost
 impossible to extract these funds from the populace.

 If for most of 1684-88 there was no colonywide government in existence,
 what of the local officials? Were they not around to provide that evidence
 of the state's continued existence, which so many people through the ages
 have deemed vital to man's very survival? The answer is no. The lower
 courts met only a few days a year, and the county officials were, again,
 private citizens who devoted very little time to upholding the law. No, the
 reality must be faced that the new, but rather large, colony of
 Pennsylvania lived for the greater part of four years in a de facto
 condition of individual anarchism, and seemed none the worse for the
 experience. Furthermore, the Assembly passed no laws after 1686, as it was
 involved in a continual wrangle over attempts to increase its powers and to
 amend, rather than just reject, legislation.

 A bit of government came in 1685, in the person of William Dyer as
 collector of the king's customs. But despite the frantic urgings of William
 Penn for cooperation with Dyer, Pennsylvanians persisted in their de facto
 anarchism by blithely and regularly evading the royal navigation laws.

 William Penn had the strong and distinct impression that his "holy
 experiment" had slipped away from him, had taken a new and bewildering
 turn. Penn had launched a colony that he thought would be quietly subject
 to his dictates and yield him a handsome profit. By providing a prosperous
 haven of refuge for Quakers, he had expected in turn the rewards of wealth
 and power. Instead, he found himself without either. Unable to collect
 revenue from the free and independent-minded Pennsylvanians, he saw the
 colony slipping gracefully into outright anarchisminto a growing and
 flourishing land of no taxes and virtually no state. Penn frantically
 determined to force Pennsylvania back into the familiar mold of the old
 order. Accordingly, he appointed vice commissioners of state in February
 1687 "to act in the execution of laws, as if I myself were there present,
 reserving myself the confirming of what is done, and my peculiar royalties
 and advantages" Another purpose of the appointments, he added, was "that
 there may be a more constant residence of the honorary and governing part
 of the government for the keeping all things in good order." Penn appointed
 the five commissioners from the colony's leading citizens, Quakers and
 non-Quakers, and ordered them to enforce the laws.

 The colonists were evidently content in their anarchism, and shrewdly
 engaged in nonviolent resistance against the commission. In fact, they
 scarcely paid any attention to the commission. A year passed before the
 commission was even mentioned in the minutes of the Council. News about the
 commission was delayed until the summer of 1687 and protests against the
 plan poured in to Penn. The commissioners, and the protesters too,
 pretended that they had taken up their posts as a continuing executive.
 Finally, however, Penn grew suspicious and asked why he had received no
 communication from the supposedly governing body.

 Unable to delay matters any longer, the reluctant commissioners of state
 took office in February 1688, a year after their appointment. Three and
 one-half years of substantive anarchism were over. The state was back in
 its heaven; once more all was right with the world. Typically, Penn urged
 the commissioners to conceal any differences they might have among
 themselves, so as to deceive and overawe the public: "Show your virtues but
 conceal your infirmities; this will make you awful and revered with ye
 people." He further urged them to enforce the king's duties and to levy
 taxes to support the government.

 The commissioners confined themselves to calling the Assembly into session
 in the spring of 1688, and this time the Assembly did pass some laws, for
 the first time in three years. The two crucial bills presented by the
 commissioners and the Council regulated the export of deerskins and once
 again, levied customs duties on imports so as to obtain funds to finance
 the governmentin short, imposed taxes on a taxless colony. After almost
 passing the tax bill, the Assembly heroically defied the government once
 again and rejected the two bills.

 The state had reappeared in a flurry of activity in early 1688, but was
 found wanting, and the colony, still taxless, quickly lapsed back into a
 state of anarchism. The commissioners somehow failed to meet and the
 Council met only once between the spring meeting and December. Pennsylvania
 was once again content with a supposedly dreadful and impossible state of
 affairs. And when this idyll came to an end in December 1688 with the
 arrival of a new deputy governor, appointed by Penn, the deputy governor
 "had difficulty finding the officers of the government. . . [He] found the
 Council room deserted and covered with dust and scattered papers. The
 wheels of government had nearly stopped
 turning."<http://www.mises.org/story/1865#sdfootnote1sym>1

 William Penn, seeing that the Pennsylvanians had happily lapsed into an
 anarchism that precluded taxes, quitrents, and political power for himself,
 decided to appoint a deputy governor. But the people of Pennsylvania,
 having tasted the sweets of pure liberty, were almost unanimously reluctant
 to relinquish that liberty. We have observed that the commissioners of
 state had failed to assume their posts and had virtually failed to function
 after it was presumed they accepted. No one wanted to rule others. For this
 reason, Thomas Lloyd, the president of the Council, refused appointment as
 deputy governor. At this point, Penn concluded that he could not induce the
 Quakers of Pennsylvania to institute a state, and so he turned to a tough
 non-Quaker, an old Puritan soldier and a non-Pennsylvanian, John Blackwell.

 Once a state has completely withered away, it is an extremely difficult
 task to re-create it, as Blackwell quickly discovered. If Blackwell had
 been under any illusions that the Quakers were a meek and passive people,
 he was in for a rude surprise. He was to find very quickly that devotion to
 peace, to liberty, and to individualism in no sense implies passive
 resignation to tyranny. Quite the contrary.

 In announcing Blackwell's appointment in September 1688, Penn made it clear
 that his primary task was to collect Penn's quitrents and secondarily to
 reestablish a government. As Penn instructed Blackwell: "Rule the meek
 meekly, and those that will not be ruled, rule with authority."

 John Blackwell's initial reception as deputy governor was an omen of things
 to come. Sending word ahead for someone to meet him upon his arrival in New
 York, he landed there only to find no one to receive him. After waiting in
 vain for three days, Blackwell went alone to New Jersey. When he arrived at
 Philadelphia on December 17, he found no escort, no parade, no reception
 committee. We have mentioned that Blackwell couldn't find the Council or
 any other government officialsand this was after he had ordered the
 Council to meet upon his arrival. One surly escort appeared and he refused
 to speak to the new governor. And when Blackwell arrived at the empty
 Council room, a group of boys from the neighborhood gathered around to hoot
 and jeer.

 The Quakers, led by Thomas Lloyd, now embarked on a shrewd and determined
 campaign of resistance to the imposition of a state. Thomas Lloyd, as
 keeper of the great seal, insisted that none of Blackwell's orders or
 commissions was valid unless stamped with the great seal. Lloyd, the keeper
 refused to do the stamping. It is amusing to find Edward Channing and other
 thorough but not overly imaginative historians deeply puzzled by this
 resistance: "This portion of Pennsylvania history is unusually difficult to
 understand. We find, for instance, so strong and intelligent a man as
 Thomas Lloyd declining to obey what appeared to be reasonable and legal
 direction on the part of the proprietor. As keeper of the great seal of the
 province, Lloyd refused point blank to affix that emblem of authenticity to
 commissions which Blackwell presented to
 him."<http://www.mises.org/story/1865#sdfootnote2sym>2 What Channing failed
 to understand was that Pennsylvanians were engaged in a true revolutionary
 situation, that they were all fiercely determined to thwart the
 reimposition of a burdensome state upon their flourishing stateless
 society. That is why even the most "reasonable and legal" orders were
 disobeyed, for Pennsylvanians had for some years been living in a world
 where no one was giving orders to anyone else.

 Lloyd persistently refused to hand over the great seal or to stamp any of
 Blackwell's documents or appointments with it. Furthermore, David Lloyd,
 clerk of the court and a distant relative of Thomas, refused absolutely to
 turn over the documents of cases to Blackwell even if the judges so
 ordered. For this act of defiance, Blackwell declared David Lloyd unfit to
 serve as court clerk and dismissed him, but Thomas Lloyd promptly
 reappointed David by virtue of his alleged power as keeper of the great
 seal.

 As a revolutionary situation grows and intensifies, unanimity can never
 prevail; the timid and the shortsighted begin to betray the cause. Thus the
 Council, frightened at the Lloyds' direct acts of rebellion, now sided with
 Blackwell. The pro-Blackwell clique was headed by Griffith Jones, who had
 consented to let Blackwell live at his home in Philadelphia. Jones warned
 that "it is the King's authority that is opposed and looks to me as if it
 were raising a force to rebel." Of the members of the Council, only Arthur
 Cook remained loyal to the Lloyds and to the resistance movement. Of a
 dozen justices of the peace named by Blackwell, four bluntly refused to
 serve.

 When Blackwell found out the true state of affairs in Pennsylvania) his
 state-bound soul was understandably appalled. Here was a thriving trade
 based on continuing violations of the navigation laws. Here, above all,
 were no taxes, hence no funds to set up a government. As Bronner puts it:
 "He [Blackwell] deplored the lack of public funds in the colony which made
 it impossible to hire a messenger to call the Council, a doorkeeper, and
 someone to search ships to enforce the laws of England. He believed that
 some means should be found to collect taxes for the operation of the
 government."<http://www.mises.org/story/1865#sdfootnote3sym>3 His general
 view, as he wrote to Penn, was the familiar statist cry that the colonists
 were suffering from excessive liberty: they had eaten more of the "honey of
 your concessions than their stomachs can bear."

 Blackwell managed to force the Council to meet every week during the first
 months of 1689, but his suggestion that every county be forced to maintain
 a permanent councillor in Philadelphia was protested by the Council. Arthur
 Cook led the successful resistance, maintaining that the "people were not
 able to bear the charge of constant attendance."

 As Blackwell continued to denounce the Council and Pennsylvania as a whole
 before his accession, Pennsylvanian opposition to his call for statism was
 further intensified. On the Council, Arthur Cook was joined in the
 intransigent camp by Samuel Richardson, who launched the cry that Penn had
 no power to name a deputy governor. For this open defiance, Richardson was
 ejected from the Council.

 The conflict of views continued to polarize Blackwell and the
 Pennsylvanians. Finally, the climax came on April 2, 1689, when Blackwell
 introduced proceedings for the impeachment of Thomas Lloyd, charging him
 with eleven high crimes and misdemeanors. (Blackwell had also refused to
 seat Lloyd when the latter was elected councillor from Bucks County.) In
 his impeachment speech, Blackwell trumpeted to his stunned listeners that
 Penn's and therefore his own powers over the colony were absolute. Penn was
 a feudal lord who could create manorial courts; furthermore, Penn could not
 transfer his royally delegated powers to the people, but only to a deputy
 such as himself. The Council, according to Blackwell's theory, existed in
 no sense to represent the people, but to be an instrument for William
 Penn's will. Blackwell concluded this harangue by threatening to unsheathe
 and wield his sword against his insolent and unruly opponents.

 Blackwell's proclamation of absolute rule now truly polarized the conflict.
 The choice was now narrowed: the old anarchism or the absolute rule by
 Blackwell. Given this confrontation, those wavering had little choice but
 to give Thomas Lloyd their full support.

 Blackwell now summarily dismissed from the Council Thomas Lloyd, Samuel
 Richardson, and John Eckly. On April 9, while the Councilthe supreme
 judicial arm of the colonywas debating the charge against Lloyd, Blackwell
 threatened to remove Joseph Growdon, At this point, the Council rebelled
 and demanded the right to approve its own members. Refusing to meet further
 without its duly elected members, the Council was then dissolved by
 Blackwell.

 With the Council homeward bound, the disheartened Blackwell sent his
 resignation to Penn, while seven councillors bitterly protested to Penn
 against his deputy's attempt to deprive them of their liberties. As for
 Blackwell, he believed the Quakers to be those agents of the devil foretold
 in the New Testament, who "despise dominion and speak evil of dignities."

 >From this point on, the decision was in the hands of Governor Penn, and
 Penn decided in favor of the Quakers and against Blackwell. For the rest of
 the year, Blackwell continued formally in office, but lost all concern for
 making changes or exerting his rule. From April 1689 until early 1690 he
 was waiting out his term. Blackwell wrote to Penn that "I now only wait for
 the hour of my deliverance." He summed up his grievance against the
 Quakers: "These people have not the principles of government amongst them,
 nor will be informed"

    <http://www.mises.org/store/Conceived-in-Liberty--P96C0.aspx>A
 remarkable achievement: $100

 Meanwhile, the Assembly, headed by Arthur Cook, met in May and fell apart
 on the issue of protesting the arrest of one of its members. Between May
 and the end of the year, the Council met only twice. Pennsylvania was
 rapidly slipping back toward its previous state of anarchism. William Penn
 enlivened this trend by deciding to reestablish the old system with the
 Council as a whole his deputy governor. Writing to the leading Quakers of
 Pennsylvania, Penn apologized for his mistake in appointing Blackwell but
 wistfully reminded them that he had done so because "no Friend would
 undertake the Governor's place."

 Now he told them: "I have thought fit . . . to throw all into your hands,
 that you may all see the confidence I have in you." With Blackwell out of
 office, the Council, back in control, resumed its somnolent ways. Again
 headed by Thomas Lloyd, it met rarely, did virtually nothing, and told
 William Penn even less. Anarchism had returned in triumph to Pennsylvania.
 And when Secretary William Markham, who had been one of the hated Blackwell
 clique, submitted a petition for levying taxes to provide some financial
 help for William Penn, the Council completely ignored the request.

 ________________________

 Murray Rothbard (1926-1995), economist and historian, wrote a 4-volume
 history of the US: Conceived in Liberty, which is available from the Mises
 Institute store for $100.

 <http://www.mises.org/story/1865#sdfootnote1anc>1 Edwin B. Bronner, William
 Penn's "Holy Experiment" (New York; Temple University Publications, 1962),
 p. 108. To Professor Bronner belongs the credit for discovering this era of
 anarchism in Pennsylvania.

 <http://www.mises.org/story/1865#sdfootnote2anc>2 Edward Channing, A
 History of the United States, 6 Vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1905-25) 2:125.

 <http://www.mises.org/story/1865#sdfootnote3anc>3 Bronner, "Holy
 Experiment," p. 119.


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The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
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