It is when this law of personal duty is assumed as the principle of public government that the order of society is inverted, and the function of the magistrate is inevitably taken up by the individual, and the old wilderness law of blood-revenge is reinstituted.

The legislation of William Penn involved no abdication of the power of the sword by the civil governor.

The enactment, however sparing, of capital laws conceded by implication every point that is claimed by Christian moralists in justification of war.

But it is hardly to be doubted that the tendency of Quaker politics so to conduct civil government as that it shall "resist not evil" is responsible for some of the strange paradoxes in the later history of Pennsylvania.

The commonwealth was founded in good faith on principles of mutual good will with the Indians and tender regard for Indian rights, of religious liberty and interconfessional amity, and of a permanent peace policy.