nally established, however, the disproportion of power between the
upper and the lower house was so great as to cause much just
dissatisfaction. The council was in effect a body of seventy-two
governors; the assembly, which more directly represented the people,
could consider no laws save those sent down to them by the council. The
Constitution had to be changed.

One of the good qualities of the Constitution was that it was possible
to change it. It provided for the process of amendment. That customary
article with which all constitutions now end appeared for the first time
in Penn's Frame of Government. Another good quality of the Constitution
was that it secured an abiding harmony between its fundamental
statements and all further legislation. "Penn was the first one to hit
upon the foundation or first step in the true principle, now the
universal law in the United States, that the unconstitutional law is
void."

Whatever help Penn may have had in the framing of this legislation, from
Algernon Sidney and other political friends, it is plain that the best
part of it was his own, and that he wrote it not as a politician but as
a Quaker. It is an application of the Quaker principles of democracy and
of religious liberty to the conditions of a commonwealth. From beginning
to end it is the work of a man whose supreme interest was religion. It
is at the same time singularly free from the narrowness into which men
of this earnest mind have often fallen. Religion, as Penn considered it,
was not a matter of ordinances or rubrics. It was righteousness, and
fraternity, and liberty of conscience.

In this spirit he wrote a letter to the Indian inhabitants of his
province. "The great God, who is the power and wisdom that made you and
me, incline your hearts to righteousness, love, and peace. This I send
to assure you of my love, and to desire you to love my friends; and when
the great God brings me among you, I intend to order all things in such
a manner that we may all live in love and peace, one with another, which
I hope the great God will incline both me and you to do. I seek nothing
but the honour of his name, and that we, who are his workmanship, may do
that which is well pleasing to him.... So I rest in the love of God that
made us."

Now colonists began to seek this land of peace across the sea. A hundred
acres were promised for forty shillings, with a quit-rent of one
shilling annually to the proprietor forever. In c