§ 48]

DEMOCRATIC SELF-GOVERNMENT

41

Charles I found himself at once so involved in quarrels at home and abroad that he had little time to give to a distant colony. Thus Virginia was left to develop with less interference than it would have had from the most liberal proprietary company.

The London Company had planted constitutional liberty in America; the settlers clung to it devotedly; and the careless royal government found it easier to use the institution than to uproot it.

46. The Virginians had dreaded Harvey's coming. Despite his "proposition" for an Assembly, he was known as a supporter of arbitrary rule. And so, soon after his arrival, the Assembly of 1632 reënacted, word for word, the great law of 1624 regarding representation and taxation.

Harvey clashed continually with the settlers, and complained bitterly to the authorities in England about the "self-willed government" in Virginia. Finally, he tried to arrest some of his Council for "treason." Instead, the Council and Assembly "thrust him out of his government," sent him prisoner to England, and chose a new governor in his place. This was mutiny of 1635." Two years later, the King restored Harvey for a time; but replaced him, in 1639, by the liberal Wyatt.

"the

47. In 1641 Sir William Berkeley was sent over as governor. He had been an ardent royalist in England; so his first Assembly enacted verbatim, for the third time, the law of 1624 regarding taxation. He ruled, however, with much moderation, keeping in touch with the Assembly and showing no promise of the tyranny which was to mark his second governorship after the Restoration (§§ 156 ff.).

48. In 1649, after the English Civil War, the home country for a time became a republican "Commonwealth." Parliament sent commissioners to America to secure the obedience of the colonies. Berkeley wished to resist these officers, but the Assembly quietly set him aside and made terms (Source Book, No. 34). The government was reorganized so as to put more power into the hands of the Burgesses, because parliament could trust them better than it could the more aristocratic elements. Each year a House of Burgesses was to be chosen as

formerly, but this body was now to elect the governor and Council. During the next nine years (1652-1660), Virginia was almost an independent and democratic state.

49. This democratic self-government was vigorously maintained. On one occasion (1657), a dispute arose between the Burgesses and the governor. Governor Matthews and the Council then declared the Assembly dissolved (as a royal governor would have done). The Burgesses held that the governor, having been made by them, could not unmake them, and that " we are not dissoluable by any power yet extant in Virginia but our owne." Matthews threatened to refer the matter to England. The Burgesses then deposed him, and proceeded to reëlect him upon condition that he acknowledge their supreme authority.

In March, 1660, Governor Matthews died. Charles II had just returned to the throne in England. The Assembly wished to conciliate Charles, and so it chose Berkeley governor again. But it also made an attempt to save Commonwealth liberties by enacting that Berkeley

governe according to the ancient lawes of England and the established lawes of this country, and . . . that once in two years at least he call a Grand Assembly, and that he do not dissolve this Assembly without the consente of the major part of the House."

The failure of this attempt to restrict the new governor belongs to a later chapter.

FOR FURTHER READING.-This text-book can be used, like others of its kind, with the usual amount of supplementary reading from standard "secondary" works. The author has planned, however, for Part I to be accompanied instead by a rather full study of illustrative "sources" which he has collected for the purpose in a Source Book. Nos. 1-35 may be used to advantage with this chapter. Frequent suggestions for the use of the more important documents in that volume are given in this book. The teacher will find many other ways to relate the sources to the narrative. It is well to ask a student to find in a given document some important fact which is not mentioned in this text-book but which might well be mentioned. In particular, it is a good exercise to set a

§ 49] VIRGINIA DURING THE COMMONWEALTH

43

student to find in a given "source" the authority for some statement in the text, or to find a possible basis for deciding between two conflicting authorities.

For the class which does not use the Source Book, the following bibliography is suggested in connection with early Virginia.

Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation, 1-97 (charming and scholarly); Fiske, Old Virginia and her Neighbors, I, 1-224; Channing, History of the United States, I, 115-241; Becker, Beginnings of the American People, 37-70.

In fiction, mention may be made, for this period, of Mary Johnston's To Have and to Hold and Eggleston's Pocahontas and Powhatan. Kingsley's Westward Ho pictures the rivalry between England and Spain' in the Old World and the New.

SUGGESTIONS AND QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND REVIEW

1. Quote from memory three or four memorable sentences or phrases (such as the quotation at the head of chapter iii and that in § 33). 2. Make a syllabus for Virginia to 1660.

3. Let each student present a list of twelve or fifteen questions for the .others to answer, the instructor criticizing when necessary.

4. Sample Questions. (1) Who chose the chief executive in Virginia in 1607? In 1611? In 1620? In 1625? In 1655? (2) Distinguish between the Virginia General Assembly and the Virginia Company's Great and General Court, as to place, composition, and powers. (3) Did any of the royal charters to the Virginia Company suggest self-government for the settlers? Justify the answer. (4) When and why did the Ordinance of 1621 cease to be valid? (5) Distinguish two stages in the attack of King James upon the liberal London Company. (6) Who had authority to make laws for the Virginians in 1608 ? In 1610? In 1616 ? In 1621? In 1631? (7) What facts about the colony in this period, not referred to in the text above, can you find in the Source Book? Do you learn anything from the story of Gilbert (§ 20) about European familiarity with the North Atlantic coast of America?

(Students should be trained to answer briefly but inclusively. For the fifth question, some such answer as the following should be required: First he tried in vain to secure control of the Company by dominating its elections in 1620 and 1622; then, he secured its overthrow through a decree of his subservient courts against the validity of the Company's charter,.in 1624.)

CHAPTER VI

MARYLAND1: A PROPRIETARY PROVINCE

Among the people of Lord Baltimore's colony, as among Englishspeaking people in general, one might observe a fierce spirit of political liberty coupled with an ingrained respect for law. - FISKE, Old Virginia.

50. For Maryland, the plan of colonization was much like that of Raleigh's day. George Calvert, a high-minded gentleman, had been interested for many years in the expansion of England. He was a member of the London Company and of the New England Council (§ 58); and finally he took upon his own shoulders a separate attempt to build a colony.

MORE.

In 1623, Calvert secured a charter from King James for a vast tract in Newfoundland, with authority to rule settlers there; and to this Province of Avalon he sent out several bodies of colonists. Just after receiving the grant, Calvert became a

GEORGE CALVERT, FIRST LORD BALTIAfter a portrait by Mytens, court painter to James I, in the gallery of the Earl of Verulam, Glastonbury. Catholic, though that religion was then persecuted sternly in England. Until this time his life had been spent mainly

1 From 1607 to 1620 Virginia was the only English colony on the continent. Then came the beginnings of New England; but for some time more the two

§52] GROWTH OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 45

in the service of the government; but now he had to withdraw from office. To reward his past services, the King made him Baron of Baltimore, and the new peer then spent some years in his colony-only to learn by bitter experience that he had been misled cruelly as to its climate and wealth.1

Broken in health and fortune, Baltimore at last abandoned that harsh location, and petitioned King Charles for a more southerly province. Before the new grant was completed, he died; but in 1632 the Charter for Maryland was issued to his son. Two years later this second Lord Baltimore sent

two hundred settlers to the colony.

2

51. The charter of 1632 sanctioned representative self-government. It put the head of the Baltimore family in the position, practically, of a constitutional king over the settlers: but his great authority was limited by one supreme provision, not found in the charter to Raleigh. In raising taxes and making laws, the proprietor could act only with the advice and consent of an Assembly of the freemen or of their representatives. This recognition of political rights for the settlers, in a royal charter, is an onward step in the history of liberty. The creation of the Virginia Assembly, and the devotion of the Virginians to it, had borne fruit. Between 1620 and 1630, it became a settled conviction for all Englishmen, at last even for the court circle, that colonization in America was possible only upon the basis of a large measure of self-government.

The pro

52. The Assembly soon won unexpected power. prietors did not live in the colony. They ruled it through governors, whom they appointed and dismissed at will, and to whom they delegated such authority as they chose. The governor was assisted by a small Council, also appointed by the proprietor. This proprietary machinery was intended to groups of colonies, north and south, were separated by vast stretches of wil. derness. Maryland was Virginia's only neighbor in the first half century.

1 See Baltimore's letter to King Charles in Source Book, No. 41. The name Avalon, with such terms as Bay of Flowers and Harbor of Heartsease, suggest rosy anticipations. Cf. § 2.

2 In Maryland this term became equivalent to "landowners."