Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

when Duke of York, had declared himself the friend of religious toleration. The result, not perhaps of Penn's influence, but of James's policy, was, that the prison doors were thrown open, and 1200 Quakers were set free. But the laws against religious opinions, passed in the late reign, remained in force. The Church party urged their being put in execution, and used their influence with the Commons to demand from the king their enforcement: the authorities in many parts acted upon them, and sentenced recusant Quakers to prison. Penn himself was repeatedly accused and arrested. On this ground, he felt the necessity of constant attendance at court, where his influence with the king was great, to urge adherence to a policy of toleration, and to procure royal orders for the liberation of Quakers. Through these occupations he was necessarily involved in the associations of a court life—a court, too, in which intrigue of every kind was rife, and objects, concealed and formidable, were cloaked by professions of toleration and liberality. The disposition of Penn, which was sanguine and charitable, left him open to the solicitations of others, beyond the circle of his own sect and friends; and we find him involved in applications to James, for remission or abatement of punishment, in behalf of various offenders in the rebellions which dis

* Penn sometimes had at his levee two hundred petitioners asking his influence with the King. (Clarkson's Life, p. 438.) He then lived in Holland house.

turbed the first year of his reign. Thus taxed, his influence involved him more deeply in court associations, and retained him near Whitehall.

There was indeed one bond of connection between James II. and the Quaker-the desire of both for reli gious toleration. Penn's views were consistent; and James's object, to us at least, is plain. It is clear that it was not equally intelligible to Penn, and that he was the dupe of the king's professions. This was perhaps unavoidable; for possibly even James himself could not have decided how far he loved toleration, or desired it merely for its results to his own faith. Probably he deceived himself into the notion that he was tolerant. There is little doubt that he convinced Penn that he was; and in Penn's labours, through the press and by petition, to persuade the members of the Legislature to substitute the doctrine of religious toleration for the severities of the Test Acts, the King and the Quaker acted cordially together.

But, however legitimate and consistent were his efforts at this period of his life, there is no doubt that his position at court subjected him to many imputations, and that his guilelessness deepened the suspicions.

When men saw his close connection with James, they accused him of leaning to James's faith; when they perceived his intimacy, they inferred his acquaintance with James's projects; and when they saw these relations continue, though the designs were developed, they

never doubted his guilty connivance. We cannot, therefore, wonder that he should have suffered in reputation, both in his own time and since; nor, when we see his own sect doubting him, and the candid Tillotson staggered by his conduct, can we acquit him of* culpable imprudence. It is true that his aim was honest, and that, in the main, his motives were pure; but his example adds another lesson, to those which history supplies, that the purest motives should not lead us into perilous associations; and that no one has ever entered into an alliance with Popery, for objects which he believes to be good, without being made, by a power circumventing and mastering his own, to contribute some countenance to other objects, which all Protestants will pronounce to be evil.

We may justify Penn, when, on behalf of the suffering Quakers, or the exiled philosopher Locke, or those who had been condemned in Monmouth's rising, or banished in Sydney's cause, he sought and won, by persevering earnestness, from the royal favour, a tardy and ungracious pardon. We applaud him for the faithful honesty, with which he used his influence in the royal closet to mitigate severities, to introduce to James sound counsellors, and to warn him against the fatal courses into which the Jesuits were dragging him. We appreciate the natural desire, with which his sanguine

*This is well stated in the letter written to Penn in October 1688, by the Secretary of the Board of Trade. (Clarkson, p. 16.)

mind caught at the idea of a full religious toleration, as it seemed within his reach. It is not wonderful that one, who in order to compass this had sacrificed his wish to return to his favourite colony, should shut his eyes to the faults of James, and fix them on the one object he himself had in view. Nor, indeed, can we refuse him the praise of pursuing this object in the face of prejudice and opposition, and refusing to bate one iota of his claim. He forfeited the confidence of the Nonconformists of his time, and brought on himself the attacks of the Church; but we, who enjoy entire toleration, ought to appreciate Penn's endeavours. But we do not praise, nor do we acquit him, when we find him induced to become mediator, on behalf of the king, with the Fellows of Magdalen College, to persuade them to give up their rights, and to offer a submission which would for ever have tarnished their name.* No arguments should have reconciled Penn to such an office; no adequate plea can be raised in his favour.†

We acquit Penn, as the history of England after

* Clarkson admits that Penn proposed that Christ's Church and Magdalen Colleges should be given up to the Papists! (Clarkson, p. 516.) + I put aside, as wholly insufficient, the special pleading of Mr. Dixon. But I must equally set aside, with a feeling of great regret, the charges which Mr. Macaulay has, in his history, heaped upon Penn. His confounding him with George Penne, and imputing to him a base transaction, in which that low gamester was concerned, are not to be justified. Nor was it proper, in addition to the grave blame which attached to Penn for his conduct in regard to Oxford, to add other charges which, (as Mr. Dixon has shewn) are not well-founded.

the Revolution has honourably cleared him, of the charge of favouring Popery, of connivance with Jesuits, or of abetting the infatuated policy of James; but we blush to see him separating his sect from the friends of constitutional liberty, and going, hat in hand, at the head of the Quakers, to thank James for his unconstitutional Declaration of Indulgence. True, he and his sect were not alone to blame for this; but, quite as much that system of intolerance, persevered in so long and obstinately by the Church and Parliament, as to drive the best friends of liberty to seek a refuge in alliance with tyranny, that they might eseape persecution. Still, not the less is the alliance to be deplored, and those who, like Penn, abetted it, must be condemned.

But if Penn had, in this part of his conduct, fallen into error, partly through anxiety for religious freedom, and partly through the credulity of a confiding nature, the storm, which fell upon him after the Revolution, took a full revenge. He was then accused of conspiring with James's adherents. Acquitted, he was again charged; spies dogged him, informers harassed him; the Government, who disliked his position in the United States, favoured his accusers. His Irish estates were devastated, and in part confiscated; his English property, through legal chicanery, and a fraudulent steward, was fearfully injured. His colony, the child of his heart, was threatened to be wrested from him.

« VorigeDoorgaan »