292 PENNSYLVANIA, THE QUAKER COLONY CHAP. 



whose members controlled its government for more than 

 two generations ; because Friends stood in those days, 

 not only for pure religion and undefiled, but for civil and 

 religious liberty in its fullest measure ; because the great 

 province they founded on the banks of the Delaware had 

 an important share in establishing that liberty as the 

 leading principle of the United States of America ; and 

 because the example of these states had much to do with 

 the recognition of the rights of man in the older countries 

 of the world. 1 



The frame of government set up by William Penn for 

 his new province in 1682, and developed in the charter of 

 1701, was based upon the broad principles of love, justice 

 and freedom. His code of laws is still worthy of close 

 study for its social ideals. It is well known that his 

 wise and friendly treatment of the native Indians pro- 

 hibiting the sale of rum to them, and buying their land 

 on just terms was followed by seventy years of peace 

 and concord with these tribes, although there were bloody 

 wars in the adjoining colonies. The tradition of the 

 Great Onas, as they called Penn, and of his Friends, 

 lingered for many generations amongst the red men. 

 All men were equal in the new state : justice was free 

 and simple : prisons and penalties were on a reformed 

 model, that the offender might be reclaimed. Penn had 

 a clear vision of freedom. " Any government," he writes, 

 " is free for the people under it (whatever be the frame), 

 where the laws rule, and the people are a party to those 

 laws." In 1687 he printed for the use of his colonists 

 Magna Carta and two other English charters, " that 

 every man may understand what is his right and how to 

 preserve it." Again he wrote of the charter forWest 

 Jersey : " We lay a foundation for after ages to under- 

 stand their liberty as men and Christians, that they may 

 not be brought in bondage but by their own consent, for 

 we put the power in the people." Representative govern- 

 ment was set up in Pennsylvania on lines so advanced 

 as to include the essential principles for which the Chartists 



1 Ruffini, Religious Liberty, trans., pp. 284-289. i 



