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 Philadelphia, city of brotherly love, in a fashion calculated to obviate the terrible evils of congestion that cursed the municipalities of the Old World.

Bearing in mind no doubt the methods of Lord Baltimore, Penn offered land to the large investor in five thousand acre lots at £100 each, with fifty acres added for every indentured servant transported, and to every man who would take over and "seat" his family in the colony a five hundred acre holding, all on the basis of an annual quitrent to the proprietor. If climate, soil, and the difficulty of alluring rich settlers had not defeated the plan, Pennsylvania might have become a colony of great estates tilled by tenants and laborers but in the end circumstances made it the home of traders and farmers. Penn's ingenious advertising in England and on the Continent drew merchants, yeomen, and peasants rather than men of wealth with capital to buy estates—English Quakers, Germans of various Protestant faiths, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, Welsh Baptists, and later some Irish of the old stock, Catholic in religion—seekers after homesteads, not potential landlords of the grand style.

Under the scheme of government established by Penn, toleration was granted to "all who confess and acknowledge one Almighty and eternal God to be the creator, upholder, and ruler of the world and that hold themselves obliged to live peaceably and justly in civil society"; while freeholders and taxpayers professing faith in Jesus Christ were given the right to vote for members of the popular assembly. In practice, however, it appears that neither Catholics nor Jews enjoyed freedom of religious worship, at least in the beginning of the enterprise. Moreover, ungodly revelers were subdued to the law and stage plays, cards, dice, Maygames, masques, and excessive hilarity were forbidden. To make easy the burden of taxes on property an excise for the support of the government was imposed on spirits.

Though moderation characterized Penn's theories of state, his days were filled with "hurries and perplexities"