Overview
Some Account of the Province of Pennsilvania in America is a short promotional tract by William Penn addressed to English readers who might be inclined to settle in, or invest in, the newly granted province of Pennsylvania. It is not a narrative, memoir, or history; it is a practical prospectus. Its purpose is stated plainly on its title page: it was “made publick for the information of such as are, or may be disposed to transport themselves or servants into those parts.” The work therefore combines a description of the land with an account of the terms on which it could be obtained and the “privileges and powers” by which it was to be governed.
The pamphlet begins by identifying the province and the legal basis of Penn’s title—the grant made to him under the great seal of England—and then proceeds to describe the situation and bounds of the territory. It sets out the province’s position in relation to the Delaware River, the neighboring colonies, and the surrounding countryside, and it presents the region as well watered, fertile, and favorably circumstanced for agriculture and trade. The account dwells on the climate, the quality of the soil, the rivers and harbors, and the natural produce of the country, all with an eye to reassuring cautious English readers that the land was habitable, productive, and capable of supporting settled communities.
A substantial part of the tract is given over to the terms of settlement. Penn sets out the conditions on which land would be granted: the size of the tracts offered to purchasers, the purchase price, and the annual quitrent reserved to the proprietor, together with the arrangements made for servants and for the transport of settlers and their goods. These terms are presented not as arbitrary impositions but as a fair and orderly framework intended to prevent the disorder and speculation that had troubled other colonies. The pamphlet also looks forward to the laying out of a principal city and to the allocation of lots to purchasers, presenting the planned urban center as an essential part of the province’s design rather than an afterthought.
The tract further explains the form of government and the liberties that settlers could expect. It describes a system in which laws would be made with the consent of the freemen and in which liberty of conscience would be secured—a point of particular importance to Penn and to the persecuted religious groups to whom much of the pamphlet was addressed. The “privileges and powers” mentioned in the title are presented as guarantees that those who emigrated would not be subject to arbitrary rule but would enjoy the protections of English law together with a substantial measure of self-government.
Throughout, the tone is promotional but sober. Penn anticipates and answers the objections of hesitant readers—fears about the climate, the distance, the native inhabitants, and the security of land titles—and presents Pennsylvania as an orderly, lawful, and promising alternative to the conditions faced by many in England. The tract is thus less a description of an existing society than a blueprint and an invitation: it describes a province that was, at the time of writing, still being organized, and it seeks to attract the settlers and purchasers on whom that organization depended.
In scope, the work is brief and practical rather than literary. It does not attempt a full natural history, a chronicle of events, or a detailed constitutional treatise; it concentrates on the information a prospective emigrant or investor would need—where the province lay, what it produced, how land could be acquired, and under what government the settler would live. Its lasting interest lies in the fact that it expresses, in Penn’s own words and at the moment of the colony’s founding, the intentions and expectations that shaped the early settlement of Pennsylvania.
The account treats the native inhabitants not simply as one of the hazards about which a cautious reader might inquire but as a people with whom the province’s founder intended to deal on terms of justice and purchase. It sets out an expectation of fair dealing—of buying land rather than seizing it, of keeping covenants, and of preserving peace—and presents this policy as both a moral duty and a practical safeguard. For the prospective emigrant, the assurance was that Pennsylvania would not be a frontier of chronic war; for the religious reader, it was evidence that the colony’s purposes were not merely commercial. In this respect the tract gives the Pennsylvania project a distinctive character among contemporary promotional literature, which more often treated the indigenous population chiefly as an obstacle to be overcome.
The religious purpose of the colony runs through the tract as a whole and gives shape to its commercial arguments. The province is presented as a place where those who had suffered for conscience might live quietly and worship according to their convictions, and the inducements of fertile land, moderate terms, and orderly government are offered as means to that end rather than as ends in themselves. The tract does not separate the settler’s worldly interest from his spiritual one: emigration is urged as a way of improving one’s condition and as a way of living faithfully, and the two are treated as compatible and mutually supporting. This fusion of the economic and the religious is one of the work’s most characteristic features, and it helps to explain its appeal to the particular audiences—dissenting congregations, yeomen, and merchants—to whom it was directed.
The conditions of settlement are presented with an insistence on legal security that goes beyond a simple list of prices and rents. The tract treats the terms as a contract binding the proprietor as well as the purchaser, and it dwells on the importance of clear titles, orderly layout, and fixed obligations. The concern is not only to attract buyers but to reassure them that their purchases would not be rendered insecure by the confusion and dispute that had attended landholding in other colonies. In this emphasis on certainty and regularity, the document reveals its essentially legal cast and the extent to which the whole enterprise was conceived as an orderly transaction rather than an adventure.
The account also describes the practical arrangements of transplantation—the passage of settlers and servants and the provisions needed for their establishment—and in doing so treats emigration as a matter requiring forethought and organization. The reader is given not an exhortation to take a leap in the dark but information on which to base a decision and a plan. Its manner is that of a reasonable proposer setting out facts and terms, inviting comparison between Pennsylvania and other colonies and between Pennsylvania and England. The reader is treated as a judge to be persuaded by evidence rather than by enthusiasm, and this sober, forensic stance is itself part of the argument: it suggests that the province was a matter of calculation and principle rather than of chance.
