The science and care of the physician were supplied among them, by industry, temperance, and moderation of their passions.

Their religion, like most others, took its rise in the wild enthusiasm of an ignorant multitude, and was marked in its origin by irregularities repugnant to the spirit of christianity. Extravagant grimaces and contortions of limbs, in their worship, as it is related by some, and which, in all ages, have been the usual marks of inspiration, gave to this community the name of quakers; their love of equality, their reciprocal charities and tenderness for each other, entitled them to the appellation of friends. By the plainness of their manners; by their exemption from the reigning follies and frivolities of the world, they were regarded as a strange, ludicrous, and eccentric people. They were pitied by the courtier; hated, scourged, hung by the bigot; laughed at by fools, and admired by philosophers.

In imitating the divine author of their religion, the quakers submitted, without resentment, to mockery and insult; without vengeance, to imprisonment and death. By too rigid a construction of his precepts they violated the most sacred law of human nature, and refused to bear arms against the enemies of their country. But by their civil and religious administration, by the piety and innocence of their morals,

they promoted and propagated those republican virtues, without which the institutions of liberty cannot subsist among men, and independence becomes unworthy the blood that is shed in the acquisition of it.

In Pennsylvania, the quakers reared the most durable monuments of their fame, and advanced to their most elevated grade the interests of their order. The freedom, liberality and benevolence of their policy invited among them a numerous population, as well from the adjacent provinces as from Europe; and the industry of the German, the activity and enterprise of the Irishman, joined to the preexisting order and economy of this province, raised it to a sudden height of prosperity, which has been seldom equalled in the history of nations. The settlements of William Fenn were preceded by a purchase of their lands and solemn treaty with the natives. The only one, it may be observed, that was not sanctioned by the formality of an oath, and the only one, perhaps, that was observed with a sacred and inviolable fidelity. Of this, the best evidence is the affectionate intercourse which subsisted, for half a century, between the parties, so eagerly desired by the Indians, that many of the tribes of these barbarians not only courted the alliance and cherished the friendship of the colonists, but solicited, as a privilege,

to be subject to the beneficent influence of their authority.

Whoever is armed with integrity and innocence of life, needs not the sword to protect him against the malevolence of mankind. This honest sentiment of poetical fancy is not quite unworthy the sober wisdom of the sage. Pennsylvania, at least, furnishes the example that these virtues, accompanied by piety and justice, may soften the ferocity of the savage, however feeble a barrier they oppose to the fury of fanaticism or the rage of ambition.

DELAWARE.

Delaware was first settled in 1627, by a colony of Swedes and Finns under commission of the king of Sweden. It was subdued by the Dutch of New York in 1655, and remained under the dominion of that province till 1682. It was at this period united to Pennsylvania, and became a distinct government in 1701.

In their civil administration the inhabitants of this colony manifested a warm devotion for liberty; and in war, a bravery and enterprize which have given them, notwithstanding the minuteness of their territory, a conspicuous rank in the annals of the revolution. They descended from a nation prolific in

heroes. The countrymen of Gustavus Vasa were no strangers to the value of political freedom.

MARYLAND.

This province was founded by the proprietor lord Baltimore in 1634. The first expedition consisted of about two hundred Roman Catholics of distinguished fortune and rank, who with their adherents sought in America a retreat from religious persecution and from the arbitrary and grievous injuries they sustained by the illiberal policy of the British government. Here, with a magnanimity unusual in such circumstances, they extended to all sects, that associated with them, the entire enjoyment of religious freedom. And so far had they been taught by their own sufferings, to appreciate and revere this sacred privilege, that even a contumelious expression against other denominations was expressly forbidden by their laws. The puritan expelled from Virginia, the quaker from Massachusetts, the Dutch from the Delaware, after the conquest of their possessions by the English: all found among them a welcome asylum; and their province, cherished by this liberal policy, soon grew into importance by the industry and enterprise of a virtuous population.

Cromwell, with his bigoted parliament, at length took offence at this catholic system of moderation. It was regarded as a masked battery erected in the new world against the dominion of the saints. He was, besides, unwilling that even in the desert the enemies of the Lord should find security from his holy indignation. These catholics had likewise been mutinous and disdainful, on some occasions, of the authority of the arbitrary and rapacious governors who had been placed over them. Commissioners were therefore deputed by Cromwell for the protection of the province, and the catholics, by an act of assembly, were outlawed, and prosecutions commenced against those who were guilty of popery and prelacy, as well as against quakers, and "all such as under the profession of Christ, practised licenti

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By this mischievous policy of Cromwell the coloof Maryland was kept, during several years, state of revolutionary turbulence, until order was reestablished in 1658, by the auspicious death of that tyrant.

VIRGINIA.

Frequent enterprises were undertaken for the colonization of Virginia, unsuccessfully, by the adventurous and unfortunate sir Walter Raleigh. The