generally adopted either by legislative enactment or ju- CHAPTER dicial decisions in the other states, in all cases touching. III. the conduct of public officers, or where the matter was 1790 proper for public information, the publication might be justified by giving the truth in evidence. After remaining in force for near fifty years, this Constitution underwent, in 1838, some modifications. The patronage of the governor was greatly reduced, the concurrence of the Senate being required in the appointments to judicial offices, and the election of all county officers being given to the people. The terms of judicial office were also restricted to fifteen, ten, and five years, the longer periods in case of the higher courts. Of the political experience which led to these changes, and which has produced in our times a strong and still growing disposition to limit the period of judicial office, and to give the appointment of all officers, even those of a judicial character, directly to the people, we may find occasion to speak hereafter. The Wyoming controversy, growing out of the claim of Connecticut to the northern portion of Pennsylvania, settled, so far as the right of jurisdiction was concerned, by the federal court held at Trenton in 1782, had yet left behind it a violent contest as to the title to the lands. An attempt in favor of the claimants under Pennsylvania grants to dispossess the Connecticut settlers by force led (1784) to a collision, in which some blood was shed, known among the New England settlers as the "second Pennamite war," and then to a revival in Connecticut of the Susquehanna Company, and of a claim on its behalf, so far as the ownership of the soil was concerned, to the whole tract of northeastern Pennsylvania, originally purchased of the Indians by the Connecticut adventurers. The influx of new settlers under grants from this revived CHAPTER Connecticut Company, and the purpose on their part, III. scarcely concealed, to imitate the example of Vermont, 1790. by wresting this district from the jurisdiction of Penn sylvania and erecting it into an independent state, had brought over the Pennsylvania Assembly to a more conciliatory policy toward the old Connecticut settlers, whom it was hoped to detach from the new immigrants. In the years 1786 and 1787 acts had passed for confirming the settlers of prior date to the Trenton decision in possession of their lands, other lands elsewhere to be given to the Pennsylvania claimants. At once to satisfy the inhabitants, and to give effect to the jurisdiction of Pennsylvania, the disputed territory, hitherto attached to the county of Northumberland, had been erected into a new county called Luzerne, after the French embassador. Timothy Pickering, adjutant general, and afterward quarter-master general of the Revolutionary army, himself a New Englander, having purchased lands and resolved to settle in this new district, had been appointed clerk of the new county, and commissioner also for confirming on certain conditions the titles of all settlers prior to the Trenton decree. For his colleagues in this business the Legislature had assigned to him Alexander Patterson and John Franklin, the leaders respectively of the Pennsylvania and Connecticut parties. Most of the old settlers thus confirmed in their titles were inclined peaceably to submit; but Franklin, who had taken a very active share in the reorganization of the Susquehanna Company, was not so easily to be appeased. Jealous of his movements, Pickering obtained a warrant against him for high treason, and, not without some difficulty and danger, caused him to be arrested, and sent a prisoner to Philadelphia. But so great was the excitement which this proceeding caused, especially III. among the more recent immigrants, that Pickering judged CHAPTER it expedient to withdraw for a season. During his absence, he had been chosen by the county of Luzerne a 1790. member of the Pennsylvania Convention for taking into consideration the new Federal Constitution, and, encouraged by this mark of confidence, he ventured, after the Convention was over, to return again and resume his duties as clerk of the county. But Franklin being still detained a prisoner, Pickering himself was presently seized in his bed and carried off into the woods, to be kept as a hostage for Franklin's safety. After a detention of nineteen days, the militia of the neighboring counties being called out, Pickering's captors became alarmed, and he was released. These disturbances in Luzerne, countenanced, it was believed, by the Connecticut members of the Susquehanna Company, had led to the suspension of the law confirming the old Connecticut titles, and, a few months before the meeting of the Constitutional Convention, to its total repeal After more April. than a year's imprisonment, the obstinacy of Franklin had yielded at last, and he had been released on a promise to make no more opposition to the authority of Pennsylvania. An indictment for high treason had been found against him at the first session of the Supreme Court held in Luzerne, but that indictment was never prosecuted. Pickering, elected to represent the county in the Constitutional Convention, put his hand in that capacity to the new Constitution. There was no more resistance to the jurisdiction of Pennsylvania, but the repeal of the confirming law left matters in a very feverish state. The question of title was thus thrown into the courts, and a ten years' litigation followed, but, from the combination among the settlers to maintain each other in possession, with very little fruit to the Pennsylvania CHAPTER claimants. The bitter feelings and strong prejudices III. thus created throughout the state against the New En1790. gland intruders, and hence against New England generally, were not without a powerful effect upon the politics of Pennsylvania, helping, among other things, to draw her off from her old New England connection, and to throw her into the political embrace of Virginia. Already the third state in point of population, indeed almost equal to Massachusetts in that respect, and destined soon to surpass her, with a central situation, genial climate, and fertile territory, communicating on the east with the Atlantic and on the west with the great valley of the Mississippi, and possessing in Philadelphia, lately the federal capital and again soon to become so, the largest and wealthiest city in the Union, Pennsylvania might have been expected to take a leading part in national politics. But from this she was disabled by several circumstances, of which the principal was the want of homogeneity and community of feeling among the various classes of her population. The Episcopalians, the Quakers, and the Presbyterians, the latter mostly of Scotch Irish origin, were kept apart by strong mutual antipathies, while the great body of the Germans, many of whom did not even speak the English language, formed a still more distinct class by themselves. Add to this those great differences in political sentiment which had sprung up in Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary war. A large portion of her inhabitants had been disaffected to the Revolution, while those who supported it had been divided into two very bitter and hostile parties, a state of things in strong contrast to the unanimity of feeling which had prevailed in Virginia and Massachusetts, and which had given to them that political leadership which they still retained. This unanimity, indeed, was soon a III. good deal broken in Massachusetts; but, being preserved CHAPTER in Virginia to a remarkable degree, it went far toward securing to that state the complete political ascendency 1790. to which she ultimately attained, and of which Pennsylvania served as but a passive instrument. In political consideration, apart from the mere number of her votes, that state long remained below even New York, Connecticut, Maryland, and South Carolina, an inferior position from which she has but very gradually and not yet entirely emerged. The political influence of the Quakers, once predominant, had disappeared before the Revolution, and they now labored also under the obloquy of having been disaffected or lukewarm toward that change. Yet they still strove, and not without success, to bring their own peculiar principles of trust in humanity and long-suffering patience to operate on the political institutions of the state. Their influence and efforts contributed not a little to the mitigation of the penal code, by restoring it to the state in which it had stood before the original Quaker enactments had been superseded by adopting the English law. To them also the state was indebted for that improved system of prison discipline then just beginning to be carried into practice, which has served for a study and a model, not to the sister states only, but to the most enlightened nations of Europe. Of their efforts on the subject of slavery and the slave trade, we have already seen something and shall see more. In another object which the Quakers had much at heart, they were not so successful. That object was the continued interdiction of theatrical entertainments, suspended throughout the states at the commencement of the Revolution, but which attempts were being made again to revive by that same company of actors which, |