Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/82

 50 The founding of Pennsylvania. [i682-8 Among colonial Proprietors Baltimore alone seems to have grasped the truth that the less elaboration and complexity there is about a constitution the better, especially in a community whose needs are unknown and whose resources are untested. Under the constitution as first devised by Penn there were to be two Chambers, both elective, the Upper called a Council, consisting of seventy-two members, and the Lower of two hundred at first, with possibilities of increase to five hundred. The Council was to initiate legislation, the Lower Chamber to approve, the Crown to ratify it. The defects of this system are obvious. The Lower Chamber was a cumbrous superfluity : the Upper was too large for executive duties. This was soon perceived ; and in 1683 the Council was reduced to eighteen and the Lower House to twenty-six. No power of initiatory legislation was assigned to the representatives; but their power of veto was increased by requiring the consent not of a majority but of two-thirds. Three years later a change was introduced, which, if the Proprietor had followed it up strenuously and persistently, might have annihilated the political rights of the community. He appointed five Commissioners of State, of whom three might be a quorum, with a right of veto upon all legislation. It will be remembered that the territory conquered from the Dutch and granted to the Duke of York included a small group of settlements on the south bank of the Delaware. These were always administered as a dependency of New York. Administrative difficulties might have ensued; but fortunately the friendship existing between the Duke and Penn made a settlement easy; and in 1682 the territory was transferred to Penn and incorporated with his other grant. This portion of the provinces was commonly known as the Territories, and now forms the State of Delaware. In 1688 a dispute arose. The inhabitants of the Territories considered that they were not dealt with equally in the apportionment of magistrates. For a while a compromise was made. The Territories were to have a separate executive, but there was to be only one elective assembly for the whole province. Much of Penn's work has vanished, for in the political constitution of his colony experience and the practical teaching of necessity proved too strong for theory. But one monument of his practical judgment and foresight abides. Alone among the leaders of English colonisation in the seventeenth century, he can claim to be a city-founder. That dignity, the result of symmetry and spaciousness, in which Philadelphia ranks above any city of its own age and kind, are largely due to Penn's wise choice of a site and to his systematic construction. It was inevitable that Penn's colonial fortunes should suffer by the downfall of his patron James. There is no trace of any formal act of deprivation; but in 1692 Pennsylvania was included in the commission granted to Benjamin Fletcher as governor of New York. A better and a wiser man than Fletcher might have used the opportunity as a stepping-