His life for some time after this was stormy enough. He came out boldly and in defiance of law as a preacher of the Society of Friends; and was repeatedly imprisoned, sometimes in the Tower of London and sometimes in the loathsome prison of Newgate, from which places he was released by the intercession of the Duke of York and his father and other friends. Those were very rough times, not likely, let us hope, to be repeated. Society was very corrupt at the highest sources, and religion was more violent and aggressive in its measures then than now. The world has grown wiser and better――there is more toleration, more of the Spirit of the Master now than then, and in our favored land every soul can worship God as he may choose to do. William Penn was a _statesman_. He founded this great commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He established a code of laws that were in advance of his time. He stipulated that the law of primogeniture, that law which gives the lands of the father to the _oldest_ son, with little or no provision for younger sons, that law which is the corner-stone of the crown of England, should have no place in this new commonwealth. The property of a parent dying without a will should be _equally divided among his children_. Penn was a statesman in the broadest sense of the term. His laws were for the greatest good of the greatest number. He treated the Indians as if they were human beings, and not as if they were brute beasts. Indeed, he never treated the brutes as the Indians have been treated even in our day by harsh and unscrupulous agents of the government. Whether he was exactly just in his dealings with Lord Baltimore, the settler of Maryland, I do not know. Perhaps he was not. We know this misunderstanding gave him great trouble, and was indeed the prime cause of his return to England. Penn was a _rich man_. The inheritance left him by his father was handsome, and he could have lived most comfortably upon it. But when he received from the crown the charter which made him the owner of Pennsylvania, he was the largest landholder, except sovereigns, known in history. He did not use his wealth for personal indulgence, or for luxurious living for himself or his family. He believed that he held his property as a trustee, and that he had no right to waste it. He might have lived the life of an ordinary English nobleman (for it is said his father was offered a peerage), but such a life had no charms for him.