He was in Pennsylvania only three and a half years. But from 1681, when he received the King’s charter at the age of thirty-seven to 1718, when he died, Pennsylvania was one of his chief preoccupations. The growth and well-being of his colony was based on a tradition of religious toleration and freedom under law, fundamental principles of American civil life. Thomas Jefferson called Penn “the greatest law-giver the world has produced.”
Source: “William Penn in Pennsylvania.” Text by Paul A.W. Wallace and James P. O’Rrien; edited by Harold L. Myers. Pennsbury Manor.
Texts
Bartleby:
Gutenberg:
A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers
Google Books:
An Essay Towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe
He must not be a man, but a statue of brass or stone, whose bowels do not melt when he beholds the bloody tragedy of this war . . .