Meeting House and Counting House. The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia, 1682-1763 (review)

90 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION This is purposely not a critical analysis of the content of the book but rather a brief review in order to stimulate an interest in this valuable study. The person who will take time to read The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience will be rewarded by a new appreciation of Puritanism and a fresh contemporary interpretation of the beginnings and growth of seventeenth century Quakerism based on thorough research and well-founded conclusions. J. Harold Hadley Cambridge, Massachusetts Meeting House and Counting House. The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia, 1682-1763, by Frederick B. Tolles. Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Virginia. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1948. 292 pp. $5.00 HERE is one more book about eighteenth-century Philadelphia people. But this book is by a Friend, about Friends and of special interest to Friends, illustrated with contemporary portraits and buildings, indexed, and richly documented from primary and secondary sources. Before the end of the seventeenth century a wealthy Quaker merchant class was beginning to emerge both in England and Pennsylvania. That much is well known. But the manner in which this class of Philadelphia«, whose growing profits seemed almost inevitable, strove to reconcile its business ethics with the spiritual principles of the Society, has not been so clearly shown before. The evidence is found in the rich manuscript collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and in the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting Minutes in the Department of Records at 302 Arch Street, Philadelphia . This dual allegiance is suggested by the title, though it is the counting-house partner in the title that here receives most attention. The meetinghouse end is pretty generally known from earlier treatments and from contemporary journals of "plain" Friends. Dr. Tolles, while believing that Quakerism rose out of the Puritan environment of Commonwealth England and that it betrayed many marks of its origin, develops the idea that "in its complete reliance upon the Spirit of God manifested in the soul of every man, Quakerism revealed itself as one of the varieties of mystic religion." The problem of reconciling an essentially mystic religion with the ready profits of foreign trade proved too much for most of the families with whom Dr. Tolles has to deal. What has become of the Quaker families bearing the distinguished names of Carpenter , Dickinson, Lloyd, Logan, Morris, Norris, Owen, Pemberton, Rawle, Reynell, Shippen, Zachary? They are in the Episcopal Church. Wealth and marriage out of the Society carried their descendants away during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Already "in 1716 the Reverend George Ross observed that 'though we and the Quakers do differ widely, yet 'tis observable that when any of them do leave their own way and become Christians [sic!], they generally make their application' to the Anglican Vol. 37, Autumn 1948 BOOK REVIEWS91 minister instead of going to any of the dissenting pastors 'who, though ten to one of us, do not count one Quaker to ten that come over to the Church'." This brings us to the second important point substantiated in this book, that about the time of the American Revolution the Society in Philadelphia began to divide into worldly Friends such as were represented by some of the families just mentioned, and "plain" Friends who to save their principles cut themselves off from what William Kite used to call "the world and the things of the world." It is these latter and those of their type who are best known to us through their journals or memoirs : Benezet, Chalkley, Churchman, George Dillwyn, Emlen, Scattergood, and Nicholas Wain after his dramatic hegira from the world of wealth and fashion. The explanation of this gradual separation between the "wet" and "plain" Friends and the eventual departure of the former from the Society is here made plain. The revelation of the literary and scientific culture of the wealthy merchants is very interesting and to some degree surprising. But the reader should remember that the average Friend in the eighteenth century had no such facilities or taste for culture as the Logan, Norris, Smith, Rawle, and Reynell families. The book is beautifully printed...