the extermination of the tribes from which she sprung, and dwelling in tradition under the form of gentleness and youth.

With the success of agriculture, the Virginians, for the security of property, needed the possession of political rights. From the first settlement of Virginia, Sir Thomas Smythe had been the presiding officer of the London company; and no willingness had been shown to share the powers of government with the emigrants, who had thus far been ruled as soldiers in a garrison. Now that they had outgrown this condition of dependency, and were possessed of the elements of political life, they found among the members of the London company wise and powerful and disinterested friends. Yet in the appointment of a deputy governor the faction of Smythe still prevailed; and Argall, who had been his mercantile agent, was elected by ballot to supersede Yeardley as deputy governor of the colony. He was further invested with the place of admiral of the country and the adjoining seas, an evidence that his overthrow of the French settlements in the north was approved.

In May, 1617, Argall arrived in Virginia, and assumed its government. Placed above immediate control, he showed himself from the first arrogant, self-willed, and greedy of gain. Martial law was still the common law of the country, and his arbitrary rule "imported more hazard to the plantation than ever did any other thing that befell that action from the beginning." He disposed of the kine and bullocks belonging to the colony for his own benefit; he took to himself a monopoly of the fur trade; he seized ancient colony men, who were free, and laborers who were in the service of the company, and forced them to work for himself.

Before an account of his malfeasance in office reached England, Lord Delaware, the governor-general, had been despatched by the company with two hundred men and supplies for the colony. He was followed by orders to ship the deputy governor home, where he was "to answer everything that should be laid to his charge."

The presence of Lord Delaware might have restored tranquillity; his health was not equal to the voyage, and he did not live to reach Virginia. Argall was therefore left unre

strained to defraud the company, as well as to oppress the colonists. The condition of Virginia became intolerable; the labor of the settlers continued to be perverted to the benefit of the governor; servitude, for a limited period, was the common penalty annexed to trifling offences; and, in a colony where martial law still continued in force, life was insecure against his capricious passions. The first appeal ever made from America to England, directed not to the king, but to the company, was in behalf of one whom Argall had wantonly condemned to death, and whom he had with great difficulty been prevailed upon to respite. The colony was fast falling into disrepute, and the report of the tyranny established beyond the Atlantic checked emigration; but it happily roused the discontent of the best of the adventurers. When on the fifth of October, 1618, the news of the death of Lord Delaware reached London, they demanded a reformation with guarantees for the future. After a strenuous contest on the part of rival factions for the control of the company, the influence of Sir Edwin Sandys and his friends prevailed; Argall was displaced, and the mild and popular Yeardley was elected governor in his stead, with higher rank. On the twenty-second of November the king gave him audience, knighted him, and held a long discourse with him on the religion of the natives. Vessels lay in the Thames ready for Virginia; but, before the new chief magistrate could reach his post, Argall had withdrawn, having previously, by fraudulent devices, preserved for himself and his partners the fruits of his extortions.

On the nineteenth of April, 1619, Sir George Yeardley entered on his office in the colony. Of the emigrants who had been sent over at great cost, not one in twenty then remained alive. "In James citty were only those houses that Sir Thomas Gates built in the tyme of his government, with one wherein the governor allwayes dwelt, and a church, built wholly at the charge of the inhabitants of that citye, of timber, being fifty foote in length and twenty in breadth." At the town of Henrico there were no more than "three old houses, a poor ruinated church, with some few poore buildings in the islande." "For ministers to instruct the people, only three were authorized; two others had never received their

orders." "The natives were upon doubtfull termes;" and the colony was altogether" in a poore estate."

From the moment of Yeardley's arrival dates the real life of Virginia. Bringing with him "commissions and instructions from the company for the better establishinge of a commonwealth," he made proclamation "that those cruell lawes, by which the ancient planters had soe longe been governed, were now abrogated, and that they were to be governed by those free lawes, which his majesties subjectes lived under in Englande." Nor were these concessions left dependent on the good-will of administrative officers. "That the planters might have a hande in the governing of themselves, yt was graunted that a generall assemblie shoulde be helde yearly once, whereat were to be present the governor and counsell with two burgesses from each plantation, freely to be elected by the inhabitantes thereof, this assemblie to have power to make and ordaine whatsoever lawes and orders should by them be thought good and profitable for their subsistence."

In conformity with these instructions, Sir George Yeardley "sente his summons all over the country, as well to invite those of the counsell of estate that were absente, as also for the election of burgesses."

Nor did the patriot members of the London company leave him without support. At the great and general court of the Easter term, Sir Thomas Smythe, having reluctantly professed a wish to be eased of his office, was dismissed, and Sir Edwin Sandys elected by a great majority governor and treasurer. For deputy, John Ferrar was elected by a like majority. Nicholas Ferrar, the younger brother of the deputy, just turned of six-and-twenty, one of the purest and least selfish men that ever lived, who a few months before had returned from an extensive tour on the continent of Europe, was made counsel to the corporation; and the conduct of business gradually fell into his hands. He proved himself able and indefatigable in business, devoted to his country and its church, at once a royalist, and a wise and firm upholder of English liberties. In the early history of American colonization the English character nowhere showed itself to better advantage than in the Virginia company after the change in its direction.

It was therefore without any danger of being thwarted at home that on Friday, the thirtieth day of July, 1619, delegates from each of the eleven plantations of Virginia assembled at James City.

The inauguration of legislative power in the Ancient Dominion preceded the introduction of negro slavery. The governor and council sat with the burgesses, and took part in motions and debates. John Pory, a councillor and secretary of the colony, though not a burgess, was chosen speaker. Legislation was opened with prayer. The assembly exercised fully the right of judging of the proper election of its members; and they would not suffer any patent, conceding manorial jurisdiction, to bar the obligation of obedience to their decisions. They wished every grant of land to be made with equal favor, that all complaint of partiality might be avoided, and the uniformity of laws and orders never be impeached. The commission of privileges sent by Sir George Yeardley was their "great charter," or organic act, which they claimed no right "to correct or control;" yet they kept the way open for seeking redress, "in case they should find ought not perfectly squaring with the state of the colony.”

Leave to propose laws was given to any burgess, or by way of petition to any member of the colony; but, for expedition's sake, the main business of the session was distributed between two committees; while a third body, composed of the governor and such burgesses as were not on those committees, examined, which of former instructions "might conveniently put on the habit of laws." The legislature acted also as a criminal

court.

The church of England was confirmed as the church of Virginia; it was intended that the first four ministers should each receive two hundred pounds a year; all persons whatsoever, upon the Sabbath days, were to frequent divine service and sermons both forenoon and afternoon; and all such as bore arms, to bring their pieces or swords. Grants of land were asked not for planters only, but for their wives, "because, in a new plantation, it is not known whether man or woman be the most necessary." Measures were adopted "toward the erecting of a university and college." It was enacted that, of

the children of the Indians, "the most towardly boys in wit and graces of nature should be brought up in the first elements of literature, and sent from the college to the work of conversion" of the natives to the Christian religion. Penalties were appointed for idleness, gaming with dice or cards, and drunkenness. Excess in apparel was restrained by a tax. The business of planting corn, mulberry-trees, hemp, and vines was encouraged. The price of tobacco was fixed at three shillings a pound for the best, and half as much "for the second sort."

When the question was taken on accepting "the great charter," "it had the general assent and the applause of the whole assembly," with thanks for it to Almighty God and to those from whom it had issued, in the names of the burgesses and of the whole colony whom they represented: the more so, as they were promised the power to allow or disallow the orders of the court of the London company.

A perpetual interest attaches to this first elective body that ever assembled in the western world, representing the people of Virginia, and making laws for their government, more than a year before the Mayflower, with the pilgrims, left the harbor of Southampton, and while Virginia was still the only British colony on the continent of America. The functions of government were in some degree confounded; but the record of the proceedings justifies the opinion of Sir Edwin Sandys, that "the laws were very well and judiciously formed."

The enactments of these earliest American law-givers were instantly put in force, without waiting for their ratification by the company in England. Former griefs were buried in oblivion, and they who had been dependent on the will of a governor, having recovered the privileges of Englishmen, under a code of laws of their own, "fell to building houses and planting corn," and henceforward "regarded Virginia as their country."

The patriot party in England, who now controlled the London company, engaged with earnestness in schemes to advance the numbers and establish the liberties of their plantation. No intimidations-not even threats of blood-could deter Sir Edwin Sandys, the new treasurer, from investigating and reforming the abuses by which its progress had been retarded.