There were few servants, and very few slaves; yet the distinction of ranks, especially among the Dutch, was very marked. There was no good will between the Dutch inhabitants and the immigrants from New England; and the English towns on Long Island still cherished the hope of being restored to Connecticut, in whose popular institutions they longed to share.”[8] We now return to New Jersey, which, on the ratification of peace between England and Holland, again reverted to the English proprietaries. Berkeley, however, sold his share for £1,000 to John Fenwick and Edward Byllinge, both Quakers. The Quakers, holding opinions in advance of their age, and carrying out those opinions into practice, were persecuted everywhere, more or less, in the New World as in the Old; and now, therefore, that they numbered among their brethren men of wealth and influence, they purchased for themselves a district where “Friends” might find a safe asylum, and the “Holy Experiment of a Christian commonwealth might be tried.” The “Holy Experiment” of the Quakers, and the “Grand Model Constitution” of Locke and Shaftesbury, were two extremes. In them intellectual pride and worldly wisdom were exhibited on the one hand, and on the other the philosophy of Christianity. The quakerism of Fox and Penn and Barclay was simply Christianity as Christ and the apostles promulgated it; it was that wisdom and truth which ancient philosophers, sages and poets of all nations acknowledged and sought after, and which modern philosophers and poets—Descartes and Bacon and Coleridge and Wordsworth and Emerson—have taught, and are teaching, and to which the present age is listening and growing wiser by so doing. But quakerism rose in an age of excitement, and the absurdities and extravagances of fanaticism threw a disrepute over the grandeur and sublimity of the doctrines which it taught, and which its disciples were ready to seal with their blood. Of all sects who have arisen since the days of the apostles, none comprehended the enlightening and ennobling truths of Christianity so fully as the Quakers. None comprehended Christianity in its broad universality as they. The “light and the truth,” which they declared were like God’s natural gifts of air and sunshine, given to all alike, rich or poor, bond or free, learned or unlearned, Christian or savage, man or woman,—were the immortal prerogatives of humanity. In this doctrine of the universality of the “inner light,” the Quaker regarded all men as equal by creation. “God discovers himself to every man,” says Penn;—“every mortal truth exists in every man’s and woman’s heart as an incorruptible seed,” says Barclay. “The Bible alone, the Quaker maintained, only enlightened those to whom it was conveyed; but the whole human race was illumined by this inner light. It was ever present in the human breast, to warn, to counsel and to console. The inner light shed its blessings on woman equally with man.” “It redeems her by the