The Martin Luther King Jr. of the 17th Century ?

William Penn's Bold and Successful Experiment

Nearly 100 years before the United States declaration and more than 100 before the Constitution a Quaker businessman named William Penn would launch a model of governance that would become one of the principle models on which the new republic would be built.

Penn was granted a "Proprietary Colony" when, in 1982, James Duke of York, the future James II of England, handed over a large piece of his American holdings to Penn. Penn could have chosen the run this new area as his own personal fiefdom but instead he began to immediately work on a model of governance called the Pennsylvania Frame of Governance.

While the colony still functioned under the Royal Charter, the Pennsylvania Frame of Governance supplemented the Royal Charter with broad principles embracing complete religious toleration and broader freedoms. Though never adopted in its complete form the Pennsylvania legislature eventually adopted an amended form of it * - Penn's idea was one of the first "blows" on behalf of a set of ideals that would eventually form the American idea for a new Republic.

The fourth version of this work was titled the Pennsylvania Charter of Privileges and would last until it was replaced with the state constitution following the Revolution.

William Penn - America's First Great Champion for Liberty and Peace by Jim Powell, editor of Laissez-Faire Books and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute.

Pennsylvania History - William Penn

Pluralism in the Middle Colonies

* The very notion that the frameworks was not "adopted" by the legislature that was arguably governing Penn's own colony is demonstrative of the leadership style of this extraordinary man.