for an act of intolerance, by which all Quakers were banished, and their return regarded as a felony.

1655.

Virginia was the first state in the world, composed of separate boroughs, diffused over an extensive surface, where representation was organized on the principle of universal suffrage. In 1655, an attempt was made to limit the right to housekeepers; but the very next year it was decided to be "hard, and unagreeable to reason, that any person shall pay equal taxes, and yet have no votes in elections;" and the electoral franchise was restored to all freemen. Servants, when the time of their bondage was completed, became electors, and might be chosen burgesses.

1656.

Thus Virginia established the supremacy of the popular branch, freedom of trade, the independence of religious societies, security from foreign taxation, and the universal elective franchise. Proud of her own sons, she already preferred them for places of authority. Emigrants never again desired to live in England. Prosperity advanced with freedom; dreams of new staples and infinite wealth were indulged; and the population, at the epoch of the restoration, may have been about thirty thousand. Many of the recent comers had been royalists, good officers in the war, men of education, of property, and of condition. The revolution had not subdued their characters; but the waters of the Atlantic divided them from the political strifes of Europe; their industry was employed in making the best advantage of their plantations; and the interests and liberties of the land which they adopted were dearer to them than the monarchical principles which they had espoused in England. Virginia had long been the home of its inhabi"Among many other blessings," said their statutebook, "God Almighty hath vouchsafed increase of children to this colony; who are now multiplied to a considerable number; and the huts in the wilderness were as full as the birds'-nests of the woods.

tants.

The genial climate and transparent atmosphere delighted those who had come from the denser air of England. Every object in nature was new and wonderful. The loud and

frequent thunder-storms were phenomena that had been rarely witnessed in the colder summers of the north; the forests, majestic in their growth, and free from underwood, deserved admiration for their unrivalled magnificence; purling streams and frequent rivers, flowing between alluvial banks, quickened the ever pregnant soil into an unwearied fertility; strange and delicate flowers grew familiarly in the fields; the woods were replenished with sweet barks and odors; the gardens matured the fruits of Europe, of which the growth was invigorated and the flavor improved by the virgin mould. Especially the birds, with their gay plumage and varied melodies, inspired delight; every traveller expressed his pleasure in listening to the mocking-bird, which carolled a thousand several tunes, imitating and excelling the notes of all its rivals. The humming-bird, so brilliant in its plumage, and so delicate in its form, quick in motion, yet not fearing the presence of man, haunting the flowers like the bee gathering honey, rebounding from the blossoms into which it dips its bill, and as soon returning "to renew its many addresses to its delightful objects," was ever admired as the smallest and the most beautiful of the feathered race. The rattlesnake, with the terrors of its alarms and the power of its venom; the opossum, soon to become as celebrated for the care of its offspring as the fabled pelican; the noisy frog, booming from the shallows like the English bittern; the flying squirrel; the myriads of pigeons, darkening the air with the immensity of their flocks, and, as men believed, breaking with their weight the boughs of trees on which they alighted, were all honored with frequent commemoration, and became the subjects of the strangest tales. The concurrent relation of Indians justified the belief that, within ten days' journey towards the setting of the sun, there was a country where gold might be washed from the sand, and where the natives had learned the use of the crucible; but inquiry was always baffled; and the regions of gold remained for two centuries undiscovered.

Various were the employments by which the calmness of life was relieved. George Sandys, who for a time was in

Virginia as treasurer for the colony, but did not remain there, a poet, whose verse was tolerated by Dryden and praised by his friend Drayton and by Izaak Walton, as well as by Richard Baxter, employed the hours of night in translating the last ten books of Ovid's Metamorphoses. To the man of leisure, the chase furnished a perpetual resource. It was not long before the horse was multiplied in Virginia ; and to improve that noble animal was early an object of pride, soon to be favored by legislation.

Equally proverbial was the hospitality of the Virginians. Land was cheap, and competence promptly followed industry. There was no need of a scramble. The morasses were alive with water-fowl; the creeks abounded with oysters, heaped together in inexhaustible beds; the rivers were crowded with fish; the forests were nimble with game; the woods rustled with coveys of quails and wild turkeys, and rung with the merry notes of singing-birds; and hogs, swarming like vermin, ran at large in troops. It was "the best poor man's country in the world." "If a happy peace be settled in poor England," it had been said, "then they in Virginia shall be as happy a people as any under heaven." But plenty encouraged indolence. No domestic manufactures were established; every thing was imported from England. The chief branch of industry was tobacco-planting; and invention was enfeebled by the uniformity of pursuit.

1609.

1621.

CHAPTER VII.

COLONIZATION OF MARYLAND.

VIRGINIA, by its second charter, extended two hundred miles north of Old Point Comfort, and therefore included the soil which forms the state of Maryland. It was not long before the country towards the head of the Chesapeake was explored; settlements in Accomack were extended; and commerce was begun with tribes which Smith had been the first to visit. Pory, the secretary of the colony, "made a discovery into the great bay," as far as the river Patuxent, which he ascended; but his voyage probably reached no further to the north. An English settlement of a hundred men, on the eastern shore, was a consequence of his voyage. The hope "of a very good trade of furs" animated the adventurers; and commerce with the Indians was earnestly pursued under the sanction of the Virginia government.

1624.

1625.

An attempt to obtain a monopoly of this intercourse was made by William Clayborne, whose resolute spirit was destined to exert a powerful and long-continued influence. His first appearance in America was as a surveyor, sent by the London company to make a map of the country. At the fall of the corporation, he had been appointed by King James a member of the council; and, on the accession of Charles, was continued in office, and, in 1627 to repeated commissions, was nominated secretary of state. He further received authority from the governors of Virginia to discover the source of the Bay of the Chesapeake, and, indeed, any part of the province, from the thirty-fourth to the forty-first degree of latitude. Upon his favorable representation of the opportunities for traffic which the country afforded, a company was formed in England for trading with the natives; and, through the

1629.

1631.

May 16.

agency of Sir William Alexander, the Scottish proprietary of Nova Scotia, in May, 1631, a royal license was issued, sanctioning the commerce, and conferring on Clayborne powers of government over the companions of his voyages. Under this grant, the Isle of Kent was occupied in the following August, and the right to the soil was soon after purchased of the Indians. An advanced post was established near the mouth of the Susquehannah. The settlers on Kent Island were all members of the church of England; and in February, 1632, they were represented by a burgess in the grand assembly of Virginia. In March of that year, their license was Mar. 8. confirmed by a commission from Sir John Harvey as governor of Virginia.

1632.

1580.

1619.

1621.

The United States were severally colonized by men, in origin, religious faith, and purposes, as various as their climes. Before Virginia could occupy the country north of the Potomac, a new government in that quarter was promised to Sir George Calvert. Born in Yorkshire, educated at Oxford, with a mind enlarged by extensive travel, on his entrance into life befriended by Sir Robert Cecil, advanced to the honors of knighthood, and at length employed as one of the two secretaries of state, he not only secured the consideration of his patron and his sovereign, but the good opinion of the world. In 1621, he stood with Wentworth to represent in parliament his native county, and escaped defeat, though not a resident in the shire. His capacity for business, his industry, and his fidelity to the king, are acknowledged by all historians. In the house of commons, it was he who made an untimely speech for the supply of the king's wants; and, when they claimed their liberties as their ancient and undoubted right and inheritance, it was to Calvert the king unbosomed his anger at their use of such "antimonarchical words." The negotiations for the marriage of the Prince of Wales with a Spanish princess were conducted entirely by him. In an age of increasing divisions among Protestants, his mind sought relief from controversy in the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church; and,