Kyle Boisvert

Obedience in Life leads to Justice

    William Penn was a Quaker from Britain and went on to the new world to settle a colony free from injustice.  He was harassed and imprisoned because of his beliefs as a Quaker and had many injustices done toward him. He was given an opportunity to find a new place free from persecution in the new world and he took it. In this new world there would need to be a government and laws. William Penn new exactly what the government needed to be like he said, “Justice is the insurance which we have on our lives and property. Obedience is the premium which we pay for it.” ("Brief History of William Penn.") The government has laws to protect our property and us but if we do not follow the government we are not under its protection. It means that the government is ruled by laws and not by people. This was the complete opposite in William Penn’s time where people were the ruled over others. This change is good because the laws apply to everyone instead of the people that can be fallible and could be above the laws. An example is my friend who thought he was above the law because his dad was a police officer. He was caught with drugs in his backpack and thought his dad could get him out of it but his dad could not do anything about it so he went to a juvenile detention center. This is just the great freedom we have to know that the government has our backs and that justice will eventually come out on top. We know that the government has our backs because they are under the law too just like us. Without William Penn’s idea of ruled by laws and not men we would not have the government we have today.

 

Works Cited

"Brief History of William Penn." Ushistory.org. Independence Hall Association, n.d. Web. 20 Sept. 2015.