Analysis: Frame of Government of Pennsylvania

Date: April 25, 1682

Author: Penn, William

Genre: charter; constitution; law

Summary Overview

As a member of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, who were widely persecuted in seventeenth-century England, William Penn sought to secure a place where Quakers and those of other persecuted faiths could live with religious and civil freedom. When granted the colony that was to become Pennsylvania, Penn attempted to establish a government that would be in line with his religious views and his belief in “the divine right of government.” Penn’s Frame of Government of Pennsylvania was the means he used to give those who settled in the colony freedoms in line with his beliefs. Although reserving the executive powers for himself, this document is seen as the first charter of democratic freedom in any of the American colonies. Although full political rights were reserved only for men who owned land, everyone was accorded basic rights, such as a trial by jury. The Frame of Government established a method for the fair election of a “provincial Council, or General Assembly.”

Document Analysis

To William Penn, the founding of Pennsylvania was a “Holy Experiment.” While partially undertaken as a commercial venture, William Penn also sought to have the colony embody his, as well as the Quaker, ideals of freedom and justice. At the same time he wanted to have solid and secure governmental and economic systems for those living in the colony. He even went so far as to purchase the land for Philadelphia and surrounding towns from the American Indian tribes of the area, rather than settle the land without permission. He was the only founder of a colony to do so. As Pennsylvania was a privately owned colony, Penn could have imposed rigid rules for anyone wishing to settle there. However, through the creation of the Frame of Government, he guaranteed settlers basic civil rights that went beyond those found in any other colony. The restrictions placed upon the colonial government of Pennsylvania were groundbreaking and planted the seeds for the democratic ideals that would later become an integral part of American government. As a leader of the Quaker movement, he was also concerned with reconciling his religious beliefs with the political system. This he clearly demonstrated by the theological and political descriptions of his intentions given in the preface to the Frame of Government. Although not a formal part of the regulations, this was an important statement regarding the foundation for government in the colony.

When Penn purchased the land for the new Pennsylvania colony, it was the largest private purchase of land in England’s American territory. Unlike previous colonies, Pennsylvania did not border the Atlantic Ocean. It was directed toward the interior of the continent and might have developed in greater isolation from England than the other colonies. Although much of the land had been owned by the Duke of York, the Duke’s brother, Charles II, sold the land to Penn in a deal that both men hoped would work to their benefit. Economically, Charles II was able to write off a debt and hoped for income from gold and silver production in the territory. Charles II hoped that Penn’s proposal to open the land to Quakers and other religious groups would rid Charles’s nation of those who were causing problems between him and Parliament. Although Charles II was sympathetic toward Catholics and others who were not Anglican, members of Parliament were not. They pushed back against all of Charles’s attempts to pass religious toleration acts and continued to arrest so-called nonconformists. The king feared that the political turmoil resulting from the religious trials would upset the established order, resulting in less power for the Crown. Creating new colonies for Catholics, Quakers, and other dissidents seemed to solve the king’s problems.

Penn believed the colony would be a profit-making enterprise through the sale of land and the collection of taxes. But more importantly for Penn, the colony was an opportunity for Quakers and those of other faiths to worship as they wished. Penn saw the opportunity presented by the colony as the means to create a religiously based experiment in a new social order with basic civil rights given to all citizens. It was in this context that Penn developed the Frame of Government.

Penn was strongly rooted in his Quaker faith and worked diligently to share its message with others. Thus it is entirely within his character for him to base the foundation of the new colony upon his theology. While the Renaissance raised new questions about the role of God and religion in society, during the seventeenth century many political as well as social decisions were still based on religious ideas or concerns. Thus in many respects, Penn was a man of his times. He accepted the idea put forward in the biblical book of Genesis that humans are the stewards of the earth. Regarding God, he wrote, “it pleased him to chuse man his Deputy to rule it: and to fit him for so great a charge and trust.” He also accepted the theological concept of the inherently sinful nature of people. Because of the tendency of mankind to sin, Penn wrote that there was a need for a mechanism to enforce an external law, and this mechanism was government. To further support his view that governments are derived from God, Penn quotes from the New Testament: “The powers that be are ordained of God.” His conclusion is that “this settles the divine right of government beyond exception.”

The phrase “the divine right of government” mimicked “the divine right of kings,” a commonly used phrase that justified monarchs as rulers chosen by God. In the first three paragraphs of the preface, Penn relates the political to the religious. According to Penn, God created people as the masters among the creatures that inhabit the world. Because of human failings brought about by Adam, the harmony established by God no longer exists. Thus the concept of government was created not only to keep human failings in check but also to support the positive aspects of human nature. Since, in Christian theology, God is the creator of all that is and the source of all power, this means the power of government arises from God. Penn wrote, “So that government seems to me a part of religion itself, a filing sacred in its institution and end.” The “end” toward which government should move is the removal of evil from people’s lives. As such, government should last as long as people are in this world, until the coming of “the blessed Second Adam,” which is the second coming of Jesus. Thus, for Penn, politics and religion are only different sides of human experience, both struggling to make the world a better place by decreasing the hold of evil and increasing “goodness and charity.”

If one reads the preface to the Frame of Government and then reads the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, strong theological and political similarities are apparent. It is clear that many of the theological and political propositions set forth by Penn are echoed in Jefferson’s writing. The “unalienable rights” given by the creator of Jefferson’s time reflect Penn’s view that government is called to “cherish those that do well.” In both documents, through good government people are able to implement God’s will as to the type of society that should exist. Both men derive their understanding of this from the manner in which they understood the world to have been created. Politically, both were identical in affirming that the will of the people, the will of the governed, must be followed. Jefferson wrote that governments obtained “their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed,” while Penn affirmed, “Any government is free to the people under it (whatever be the frame) where the laws rule, and the people are a party to those laws, and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, or confusion.”

In the latter portion of the preface, Penn poses the question, is there is an ideal form of government that could always keep in check the failings of human nature? His answer is that no form of government automatically works as it should. Whether it is rule by one, a few, or many, the system in and of itself does not ensure an ideal government. Governments run by good people will be good governments, while those administered by bad people will fail to carry out the purpose of government. Because of this reasoning, Penn says it “made it uneasy to me to think of publishing the ensuing frame and conditional laws.” However, given the fact that a government must exist in the colony, Penn put forward a system in which, he believed, good actions would be encouraged and malfeasance by government officials would be hindered. All of this he tried to do “with reverence to God, and good conscience to men.” In Penn’s opinion, what must follow the creation of this form of government is to create a system for the “virtuous education of youth.” This he understood as the role of the state, not of individual families, a widely held belief in the United States that would lead to the creation of a public education system.

In the full original document, between the preface and “Laws Agreed Upon in England, &c.,” there are twenty-four articles delimiting the powers of the governor, the provincial Council, and the General Assembly. All of these were unilaterally developed by Penn. The final section of this document, “Laws Agreed Upon in England, &c.,” was written by Penn and accepted by a number of the original settlers on May 5, 1682. This section might be considered a predecessor of the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution. Although it goes beyond just the items in the first ten amendments, the forty articles in this section include basic rights regarding who is eligible to vote and hold office, taxation, the rights of those accused of crimes, criminals, marriage, servitude, and a variety of other issues. These rights were very important to Penn, so he stipulated in the laws a provision that they could only be changed by a six-seventh vote of the legislative body and acceptance by the governor.

While many of Penn’s ideas were very progressive for their time, the definition of voting citizens in section two is very much in line with his contemporaries. Only voting citizens were eligible to hold elective office. Those entitled to vote were farmers who met the land-holding and cultivation requirements or city dwellers who had paid their taxes and any special levies. Women, the very poor, indentured servants, and slaves were not entitled to vote. However, this did not mean that these individuals had no rights at all. In this initial document it states, “In all courts all persons of all persuasions may freely appear in their own way.” Thus these individuals had the right to a trial for any alleged offenses. Shortly after the founding of the colony, a special court was created to try indentured servants and slaves. Later this was changed so that indentured servants were tried in regular courts and slaves and freed blacks were segregated to a different court system. While slavery was never common in Pennsylvania, it was legal throughout the colonial period. By the time of the first US census in 1790, free blacks in Pennsylvania outnumbered slaves by a margin of about two to one.

Section three addresses the administration of honest elections. Unlike the case in parts of seventeenth-century England, voters could not be bribed. Any voter found guilty of accepting “reward or gift, in meat, drink, monies, or otherwise” would lose his right to vote, and any candidate giving such things to get support would not be eligible to run for office. As with current elections for members of the United States Senate or House of Representatives, the colonial provincial Council and General Assembly had the final say as to whether a person elected to those bodies had violated the election regulations and should be allowed into the legislative body.

While a government’s right to collect taxes has been long accepted, the manner in which this is done has caused numerous problems throughout history. Penn understood the need for money with which to run a government and to provide the necessary services to the population of the colony. However, he wanted it to be clear what kinds of taxes were acceptable. He included a statement clarifying the nature and purpose of taxes in Pennsylvania. It states that “no money or goods shall be raised . . . by way of public tax, custom or contribution, but by a law, for that purpose made.” This means that taxes could not be imposed except by law—that is, by approval of the people’s representatives in the legislature. In this manner, the citizens, and their representatives, had to be made aware of, and agree to, any proposed taxes.

The right to a fair and speedy trial was made a part of Pennsylvania’s system of justice from the very beginning. Penn had a good understanding of the British legal system, both from his study of law and from his own arrests and convictions. That Penn had once been imprisoned without a trial, had not been allowed to present evidence in his own defense in another, and then had been imprisoned after being found innocent by the jury must have influenced his very clear statements regarding fair and speedy trials. While the juries were all composed of men, they were to be “as near as may be, peers or equals, and of the neighborhood.” This was based on the assumption that these men could better understand the situation of the accused and render a fairer verdict. Since the death penalty was irreversible, a special mandate was created requiring the charge to be determined well founded by at least half the members of what might be called a grand jury. In addition, the twelve-man jury of the criminal trial must unanimously find the defendant guilty.

Although the Frame of Government was amended in 1683 when Penn met with other colony leaders in Philadelphia, the original provisions written by Penn were the basis for government throughout the colonial period. It was the most liberal document of its time for colonial government. Although, as indicated above, Penn did reflect much of what was the norm for his time in the status of women and his acceptance of slavery, he was ahead of his time in many other areas. True freedom of religion, equality in the judicial system, the guarantee of a fair trial, regulations against buying elections, and a clear tax policy made his views radical, when compared to the governmental structures in other colonies or in Britain. Because Pennsylvania became a leading colony during the 1700s, many of Penn’s ideas became known and commonly accepted by leaders of the independence movement. The “Holy Experiment” became an example of liberal thought and ideas, which made a vital contribution to the move toward independence for the American colonies.

Bibliography

Taylor, Larissa Juliet, and Frank N. Magill, eds. “William Penn.” Great Lives from History: The Seventeenth Century, 1601–1700. Vol. 2. Pasadena: Salem. 2006. Print.

“The Vision of William Penn.” ExplorePAhistory.com. WITF, 2011. Web. 19 Mar. 2012.

Wakelyn, Jon L., ed. America’s Founding Charters: Primary Documents of Colonial and Revolutionary Era Governance. Vol. 1. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2006. Print.