would be a test of the quality of the sect more severe than trial
by the cart-tail and the gibbet.

The Quakers bore the test nobly. Never did a commercial company show
itself so little mercenary; never was a sovereign more magnanimous and
unselfish. With the opening of the province to settlement, the
proprietors set forth a statement of their purposes: "We lay a
foundation for after ages to understand their liberty as men and
Christians, that they may not be brought into bondage but by their own
consent; for we put the power in the people." This was followed by a
code of "Concessions and Agreements" in forty-four articles, which were
at once a constitution of government and a binding compact with such as
should enter themselves as colonists on these terms. They left little to
be desired in securities for personal, political, and religious
liberty.[111:1]

At once population began to flow amain. In 1677 two hundred and thirty
Quakers came in one ship and founded the town of Burlington. By 1681
there had come fourteen hundred. Weekly, monthly, quarterly meetings
were established; houses of worship were built; and in August, 1681, the
Quaker hierarchy (if it may so be called without offense) was completed
by the establishment of the Burlington Yearly Meeting. The same year the
corporation, encouraged by its rapid success, increased its numbers and
its capital, bought out the proprietors of East Jersey, and appointed as
governor over the whole province the eminent Quaker theologian, Robert
Barclay. The Quaker regime continued, not always smoothly, till 1688,
when it was extinguished by James II. at the end of his perfidious
campaigns against American liberties.

* * * * *

This enterprise of the Quaker purchase and settlement of New Jersey
brings upon the stage of American history the great apostle of Christian
colonization, William Penn. He came into relation to the New Jersey
business as arbiter of some differences that arose between the two
Friends who had bought West Jersey in partnership. He continued in
connection with it when the Quaker combination had extended itself by
purchase over the whole Jersey peninsula, and he was a trusted counselor
of the corporation, and the representative of its interests at court.
Thus there grew more and more distinct before his peculiarly adventurous
and enterprising mind the vision of the immense possibilities,
political, religious, and commercial