But it may be said, it is one thing to sit at home in our study and write of Christian principles, and another to go out into new settlements amongst wild tribes, and maintain them; that it is easy to condemn the conduct of others, but might not be so easy to govern our own temper, when assailed on all sides with signal dangers, and irritated with cruelties; that the Indians would not listen to persuasion; that they were faithless, vindictive beyond measure, and fonder of blood than of peace; that there was no possible mode of dealing with them but driving them out, or exterminating them.—Arise, William Penn, and give answer! These are the very things that in his day he heard on all hands. On all hands he was pointed to arms, by which the colonies were defended: he was told that nothing but force could secure the colonists against the red men: he was told that there was no faith in them, and therefore no faith could be kept with them. He believed in the power of Christianity, and therefore he did not believe these assertions. He believed the Indians to be men, and that they were, therefore, accessible to the language and motives of humanity. He believed in the omnipotence of justice and good faith, and disbelieved all the sophistry by which wars and violence are maintained by an interested generation. He resolved to try the experiment of kindness and peace: it was a grand and a momentous trial: it was no other than to put the truth of Christianity to the test, and to learn whether the World’s philosophy or that of the Bible were the best. It was attempted to alarm him by all kinds of bloody bugbears: he was ridiculed as an enthusiast, but he calmly cast himself on his conviction of the literal truth of the Gospel, and the result was the most splendid triumph in history. He demonstrated, in the face of the world, and all its arguments and all its practice, that peace may be maintained when men will it; and that there is no need, and therefore no excuse, for the bloodshed and the violence that are perpetually marking the expanding boundaries of what is oddly enough termed civilization. William Penn received a grant of the province to which he gave the name of Pennsylvania, as payment for money owing to his father, Admiral Penn, from the government. He accepted this grant, because it secured him against any other claimant from Europe. It gave him a title in the eyes of the Christian world; but he did not believe that it gave him any other title. He knew in his conscience that the country was already in the occupation of tribes of Indians, who inherited it from their ancestors by a term of possession, which probably was unequalled by anything which the inhabitants of Europe had to shew for their territories. I cannot better state Penn’s proceedings on this occasion than in the words of the Edinburgh Review, when noticing Clarkson’s Life of this Christian statesman.