Complete. From “Curiosities of American Literature.”

WITH all his goodness and gentleness, the founder of Pennsylvania was not free from that spirit of bitter controversy which prevailed before his arrival in this country in New England; and the titles of some of his tracts are as quaint and intemperate as those of Mather and Williams, as for example: “A Brief Reply to a Mere Rhapsody of Lies, Folly, and Slander,” “An Answer to a False and Foolish Libel,” etc. The great name of Locke, says Verplanck, is associated with that of William Penn by a double tie; by his celebrated constitution of the Carolinas, which enrolls him among the earliest legislators of America, and by one of those anecdotes of private friendship and magnanimity, upon which the mind gladly reposes, after wandering among the cold and dreary generalities of history. During the short period of Penn’s influence at the court of James II., he obtained from the king the promise of a pardon for Locke, who had fled to Holland from the persecution of the dominant party. Locke, though grateful to Penn for this unsolicited kindness, replied with a firmness worthy of the man who was destined to become the most formidable adversary of tyranny in all its shapes, “that he could not accept a pardon when he had not been guilty of any crime.” Three years after this occurrence, the Stuarts were driven from the throne of England; Locke then returned in triumph. At the same time, the champions of English liberty, to serve some party object, proclaimed Penn a traitor, without the slightest ground; and all his rights as an Englishman, and his chartered privileges, were shamelessly violated by the very statesmen who had drafted the Act of Toleration and the Bill of Rights. In this season of distress and desertion, Penn was unexpectedly gratified by the grateful remembrance of Locke, who now, in his turn, interceded to procure a pardon from the new sovereign. In the pride of slandered innocence Penn answered, as Locke had formerly done, “that he had never been guilty of any crime, and could not, therefore, rest satisfied with a mode of liberation which would ever appear as a standing monument of his guilt.” The genius of Locke has been described by Dr. Watts, with equal elegance and truth, as being “wide as the sea, calm as the night, bright as the day”; still his mind appears to have been deficient in that practical sagacity which so happily tempered the enthusiasm of William Penn. The code of government and laws which Locke formed for the Carolinas contained many excellent provisions; but it was embarrassed by numerous and discordant subdivisions of power, was perplexed by some impracticable refinements in the administration of justice, and was, in all respects, unnecessarily artificial and complicated. Nevertheless, it is, remarks Verplanck, a legitimate subject of national pride that we can thus number this virtuous and profound philosopher among those original legislators of this country who gave to our political character its first impulse and direction.