It was, indeed, for the purpose of serving the monarchy that the first suggestion for a union of the colonies came about. The declared object of William Penn's plan of 1698, for two persons from each colony to meet once a year for a better understanding among the colonies, was frankly that "the English colonies may be more useful to the crown."[1] Charles Davenant commended this plan of Penn's, comparing it to the Grecian Court of the Amphictyons.[2] Others took up this idea from time to time,[3] many reasons being given as to the necessity for such a union, but none with the idea of independence or of any lessening of the royal control. Under the authority of the crown a number of meetings were held in the meantime, generally with the purpose of arranging for the common defense or to make treaties with the Indians.
Though there was unquestioned loyalty to the crown, the principle of local self-government was, nevertheless, strongly implanted in the colonists; in fact, the inducement was put forth in the newspaper advertisements and
- ↑ Rise of the Republic, 98.
- ↑ Ibid, 112.
- ↑
The plan proposed by William Penn, in 1697, for an annual congress had left in the minds of the colonists a deep impression. The result was that, when Franklin revived the idea, the people themselves rose to welcome it; and as he descended the Hudson he was greeted by cheering throngs as soon as he entered the City of New York. The boy who had first entered New York City as a runaway apprentice was revered as the mover of American Union.
In the same year, 1754, that Franklin was proposing his Union of American Colonies, David Hume, who had felt the hollowness of the political philosophy that then dominated Europe, turned to America and, expressing a belief that must have been in the minds of other men, said, "The seeds of many a noble state have been sown in climates kept desolate by the wild manners of the ancient inhabitants, and an asylum is secure in that solitary world for liberty and science."
Bancroft's History of the United States of America, iii, 81-83.
