AN

INAUGURAL DISCOURSE,

DELIVERED ON THE

5th of November, 1825,

BEFORE THE

HISTORICAL SOCIETY

OF

PENNSYLVANIA,

BY WILLIAM RAWLE, Esq.

President of the Society.

G.pec.c.

DISCOURSE, &c.

Gentlemen,

THE intention to form this society, was unknown to me, till your partiality led you to request me to undertake the office of President, and however unqualified, I have not hesitated to accept it. I have been led to this conclusion partly from the respect I felt for those who honoured me by the selection, and partly because I have long wished to see an institution of this sort established among us.

Upwards of one hundred and forty years have elapsed since the peaceful companions of William Penn landed on the shores of the Delaware.

Except their friend and guide, they numbered no distinguished character among them; they were annoyed by no candidate for superior rank, no emblazoned warrior, or lofty member of a proud aristocracy: they were humble men of moderate fortunes-most of them adherents to a sect of recent origin whose motto was meekness and benevolence.

Their departure from their native lands was unrestrained and almost unnoticed. In quietness they embarked and in quietness they landed. Here they encountered no embittered foe, they met no herds of indignant natives thronging to resist them, for the natives were already partially acquainted with Englishmen, and with this particular description of Englishmen. Several years before the date of William Penn's charter, the society of Friends had begun to settle in New Jersey. They had fixed themselves at Salem and at Burlington, and the vessels which brought out additions to their numbers had occasionally stopped at New Castle, and at Shachamaxon, now Kensington. Many Swedish settlements between these points, including Chester and Tinicum, had already proved the tractable disposition of the natives, and all was harmony and peace between them.

The admirer of pomp and worldly rank, the lover of lofty deeds in arms, the ardent inquirer after stupendous adventure and miraculous preservations, will therefore find little gratification in tracing the simple progress of our early history. It is a plain and humble tale.

The first colonists were invited in Europe by William Penn, in the most fair and candid manner, to become, not conquerors but cultivators of the soil; to conciliate, not to extirpate the natives-to earn their bread by labour, not to acquire wealth by the prodigality of chance, the pursuit of pre

cious metals, or by reducing the helpless natives to slavery. They felt no disappointment when they found, that woods were to be prostrated, cabins to be erected, the earth to be opened, and its slow returns received, before subsistence was obtained. They relied on the smiles of a gracious Providence, but they knew that His aid is only granted to those who exert all their own faculties to help themselves.

It may perhaps be fastidiously asked, what interest can be found in the narrative of husbandmen or manufacturers, whose days were spent in unvaried labour and whose nights were disturbed by no external alarms, who prosecuted in peaceful and obscure succession, the same alternation of toil and rest that are practised by men of similar occupations over all the earth? Why does the peasant of Pennsylvania in her early days, deserve a higher place in history than the peasant of England or of France?

To this we answer that to our predecessors these mere labourers of our soil, we look for the elements of that success which almost uniformly has accompanied our progress, and on the same principles the relation may also be of value to others..

The character of a nation although not always fixed by the character of those with whom it originates, often retains a tincture from it that affects its subsequent course. And hence it follows, that when we see a nation rolling tumultuously down

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