iew but also from the point of view of the inhabitants. The
proprietorships in Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and the Carolinas
were largely failures. Maryland was only partially successful; it was
not particularly remunerative to its owner, and the Crown deprived him
of his control of it for twenty years. Penn, too, was deprived of the
control of Pennsylvania by William III but for only about two years.
Except for this brief interval (1692-1694), Penn and his sons after him
held their province down to the time of the American Revolution in 1776,
a period of ninety-four years.

A feudal proprietorship, collecting rents from all the people, seems
to modern minds grievously wrong in theory, and yet it would be very
difficult to show that it proved onerous in practice. Under it the
people of Pennsylvania flourished in wealth, peace, and happiness. Penn
won undying fame for the liberal principles of his feudal enterprise.
His expenses in England were so great and his quitrents always so much
in arrears that he was seldom out of debt. But his children grew rich
from the province. As in other provinces that were not feudal there were
disputes between the people and the proprietors; but there was not
so much general dissatisfaction as might have been expected. The
proprietors were on the whole not altogether disliked. In the American
Revolution, when the people could have confiscated everything in
Pennsylvania belonging to the proprietary family, they not only
left them in possession of a large part of their land, but paid them
handsomely for the part that was taken.

After Penn had secured his charter in 1681, he obtained from the Duke of
York the land now included in the State of Delaware. He advertised for
colonists, and began selling land at 100 pounds for five thousand acres
and annually thereafter a shilling quitrent for every hundred acres. He
drew up a constitution or frame of government, as he called it, after
wide and earnest consultation with many, including the famous Algernon
Sydney. Among the Penn papers in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
is a collection of about twenty preliminary drafts. Beginning with one
which erected a government by a landed aristocracy, they became more
and more liberal, until in the end his frame was very much like the most
liberal government of the other English colonies in America. He had
a council and an assembly, both elected by the people. The council,
however, was very lar