refuge for the oppressed of every clime. William Penn believed in the
Golden Rule, and he sought to establish a state in which that rule would
be the fundamental law. Instead of stern justices growing fat on the fees
of litigation, he would have peace-makers in every county. He would treat
the Indian as of the same flesh and blood as the white, and would live on
terms of amity with red men embittered against the invaders of their
lands by many years of unjust encroachment and cruel oppression. His
object, Penn declared in his advertisement of Pennsylvania, was to
establish a just and righteous government in the province that would be
an example for others. He proposed that his government should be a
government of law, with the people a party to the making of laws. None,
he declared, should be molested or prejudiced in matters of faith and
worship, and nobody should be compelled at any time to frequent or
maintain any religious place of worship or ministry whatsoever. Trial by
jury was guaranteed; the person of an Indian was to be as sacred as that
of a white man, and in any issue at law in which an Indian should be
concerned, one half the jury was to be composed of Indians.

William Penn was well known both in England and on the Continent when he
received, in 1681, his grant of Pennsylvania from Charles II. in
discharge of a debt of about eighty thousand dollars, due by the crown to
Penn's father, Admiral Sir William Penn. The proprietor of Pennsylvania
had suffered in the cause of religious liberty and reform. He had been
confined in the Tower for writing heretical pamphlets, and been
prosecuted for preaching in the streets of London. He had traveled in
Holland and Germany as a self-appointed missionary of the Society of
Friends, and had not spared his own ease in pleading the cause of
persecuted Quakers everywhere. When, therefore, he proposed to found a
colony in America, his name alone was enough to attract a host of
followers. Many immigrants flocked to Pennsylvania even before Penn
himself had arrived there, and the settlers of Delaware, who had been
anxious as to their future under the charter of the Duke of York, gladly
came under the rule of one whose name was a synonym of equity. Under a
spreading elm the Indians met the proprietor of Pennsylvania and made a
covenant with him that was equally just to the white man and to the
native--a covenant which, it is said, was never forgotten by the
aborigines.

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