{ 254}beneath the wide-spread branches of a huge elm. "Under the shelter of the forest, now leafless by the frosts of autumn," says Bancroft, "Penn proclaimed to the men of the Algonquin race, from both banks of the Delaware--from the border of the Schuylkill, and, it may have been, from the Susquehanna--the same simple message of peace and love which George Fox had professed before Cromwell, and Mary Fisher had borne to the Grand Turk.
The English and the Indian should respect the same moral law, should be alike secure in their pursuits and their possessions, and adjust every difference by a peaceful tribunal, composed of an equal number of men from each race."
"We meet," said Penn, "on the broad pathway of good faith and good will; no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love. I will not call you children, for parents sometimes chide their children too severely; nor brothers only; for brothers differ. The friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain; for that the rains might rust, or the falling tree might break. We are the same as if one man's body were to be divided into two parts; we are all one flesh and blood."
```"' Thou'lt find.' said the Quaker, 'in me and mine,
```But friends and brothers to thee and to thine,
```And bright was the spot where the Quaker came
```To leave his hat, his drab, and his name,
```That will sweetly sound from the trump of Fame
```The city he rear'd from the sylvan shade.
```And long have the rivers their pride display'd
The children of the forest were touched by the sacred doctrine which the "Quaker king" avowed. They received the presents of Penn in sincerity, and in hearty friendship they gave the belt of wampum. "'We will live,' said they, 'in love with William Penn and his children as long as the moon and the sun shall endure.'"
Thus was established the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, its foundations laid deep and broad upon the sacred rules of truth and justice, the cardinal principles of the Quakers, who formed the prime element of the new state. That sect stood out in bold relief as exemplars of moral purity in an age and among a people eminently licentious. The court, the fountain-head of example, was wholly impure in morals, skeptical in religion, and unscrupulous in politics. Unlike the other Puritan sects, which gave royalty so much trouble, the Quakers taught morality more by example than by precept; yet they were ever bold in the