THE RESTORATION ERA 49 
wise and populous countries, as conceiving them best 
for the increase of human stock and beneficial for 
commerce. . . . Nor did any of these ever dream it 
was the way of decreasing their people or wealth. . . . 
With justice, therefore, I deny the vulgar opinion 
against plantations that they weaken England; they 
have manifestly enriched and so strengthened her.’ 1 
William Penn was born in 1644 and received the 
grant of Pennsylvania by Royal Letters Patent in 
discharge of a Crown debt in March 1680-1, the 
grant being extended by deeds from the Duke of York 
(afterwards James II) in August 1682. In modern 
Pennsylvania, New Jetsey and Delaware he had a wide 
Geld for colonising, and he set forth the persons whom 
to his mind ¢ Providence seems to have most fitted for 
plantations.” It would have been well for England if 
others had shared his views as to the right treatment 
of natives. ‘Don’t abuse them but let them have 
justice and you win them.” 2 Penn did not come into 
prominence until the later years of Charles II’s reign, 
and he was then still a young man. Of the men 
of the Restoration years in England who were con- 
cerned with the overseas empire, he, more than any 
other, brought religion into his scheme of life, and it 
is noteworthy that religion in this case was in its most 
unorthodox form, that of Quakerism, 
i See Select Tracts relating to Colonies, BM. 1029¢, 15, No. 4, p. 26. 
The words quoted will be found also in Some Account of the Province 
of Pennsilvania in America lately granted under the Great Seal of England 
fo William Penn, ete. (1681). This is in the British Museum among 
Tracts on the American Colonies (1681-1736), 
* In A Letter from William Penn, Proprietary and Governor of Pennsyl- 
vania in America to the Committee of the Free Society of Traders of that 
Province resident in London (1683), p. 7.