Of "Good Laws" and "Good Men": Law and Society in the Delaware Valley, 1680-1710 (review)

66Quaker History From the outset of the book True is clear to make his definition of "literature" not "belles lettres in the traditional sense" (xxiii), but rather "written discourse describing or reflecting initiatives for nonviolent social change" (xiii). This broader definition proves to be useful in exploring the diversity of American culture, as does his decision to include two definitions of nonviolence—"vision of love as an agent for fundamental social change" and the second, strategic or pragmatic nonviolence, defined by True as a "method ofwielding social, political, and economic power" (xii). When reading this history, one will encounter many familiar names in the history of American Literature—Melville, Hawthorne, Twain, Hemingway, Thoreau and others, but the most interesting, and perhaps also the most influential writers on nonviolence have not been writers offiction but essayists, pamphleteers and poets. True briefly sketches the lives and works of persons like Penn, Woolman, Paine, Garrison, Ballou, Burritt, Debs, Goldman, Day, King, etc., but many readers will find themselves more intrigued by the treatment he gives to perhaps lesser known figures. I have made a list formyselfofwriters True mentions whom I need to know more about, like Meridel LeSeuer, Muriel Rukeyser, Ammon Hennacy, Randolph Bourne, Stanley Kunitz, and Thomas McGrath, and no doubt many other readers interested both in cultural history and in the specific history ofnonviolence in America will make similar lists oftheir own. One leaves a reading ofthe whole book not only looking forward to encountering these unfamiliar voices, but also with the deepened awareness of the existence of a narrative that must be heard and promulgated ifthe "peaceable kingdom" imagined by America's early founders is ever to be realized. Earlham CollegeAnthony Bing Of "Good Laws " and "Good Men ": Law and Society in the Delaware Valley, 1680-1710. By William M. Offutt, Jr. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1995. Tables, notes, and index. $39.95. In the historical literature on justice systems there is an unmistakable deficiency. If one wishes to know who in society prosecuted, defended, judged, won, lost, or suffered, he will likely be disappointed. While today social scientists address these questions daily, historians rarely have done so for the eighteenth century and earlier. A prime reason is that there are few records containing the answers—court dockets and papers, censuses, tax lists, and more. Moreover, using the surviving records requires painstaking and extensive work. Therefore, William Offutt's history ofjustice in the Delaware Valley is essential reading aboutjustice in early America Book Reviews67 and precisely what the profession needs. Because the Delaware Valley was either a Quaker society or a Quaker-led society, students of Quakerism need to know Offutt's work. Hardly a page omits mentioning Friends and all the questions above are addressed to Friends especially. To the author's credit, the book is unapologetically statistical; it contains few stories and is no quick read. Offutt supplies far too many stimulating, significant judgements to recount or summarize them here. Just one example is his authoritative pronouncement that "Gospel order failed miserably in its stated goal ofkeeping Quakers from 'going to law' against each other" (p. 152). Relating anyjustice system to society requires knowing society. Quantifying them requires counting people and things in and out ofcourt: How many people were there in the Delaware Valley? How wealthy were they? How many were Quakers? The questions are not easily answered: there are no censuses, very few tax lists, and no Quaker membership rolls for the period. The author understands the difficulty and substitutes the people who appeared in court records for the actual population in the Valley. Consequently, Quakers in court are compared with all people in court, not with all Quakers or all people in the Valley. This "judicial population" underlies most of the tables and analyses the author presents. Offutt favorably compares the judicial population with a presumably more comprehensive tax list population: in 1693, 90 percent of Chester County taxpayers and 83 ofBucks were on the list ofpersons from the two counties appearing in court, 1680-1710. "Those taxed members made up only 19.1 percent ofall legal population ofBucks and Chester counties from 1680 to 1710, indicating that the legal population identified a far...