It may be that Penn has been betimes a little overrated. He has, and
deserves, a high place in the history of our commonwealth, but he was
not the real founder of it; for its foundations were laid years before
he was born and more than forty years before he received his charter.
He founded Pennsylvania only as Americus Vespucius discovered America.
Neither was he the author of those elements of free government, equal
rights, and religious liberty which have characterized our
commonwealth. They were the common principles of Luther and the
Reformation, and were already largely embodied for this very
territory[34] long before Penn's endeavors, as also, in measure, in
the Roman Catholic colony of Maryland from the same source.
Nor was he, in his own strength, possessed of so much wise forethought
and profound legislative and executive ability as that with which he
is sometimes credited. But he was a conscientious, earnest, and
God-fearing man, cultured by education and grace, gifted with
admirable address, sincere and philanthropic in his aims, and guided
and impelled by circumstances and a peculiar religious zeal which
Providence overruled to ends far greater than his own intentions or
thoughts.