crown.

The legislature was equally friendly to the power of the In every colony where Puritanism prevailed, there was a uniform disposition to refuse a fixed salary to the royal governor. Virginia, in 1658, when the chief magistrate was elected by its own citizens, had voted a fixed salary for that magistrate; but the measure, even then, was so little agreeable to the people that its next assembly repealed the law. In 1662, the royalist legislature, by a permanent imposition on all exported tobacco, established a perpetual revenue for the purpose of well paying the royal officers, who were thus made independent of colonial legislation. From that epoch, the country was governed according to royal instructions, which did indeed. recognise the existence of colonial assemblies, but offered no guarantee for their continuance. The permanent salary of the governor of Virginia, increased by a special grant from the colonial legislature, exceeded the whole annual expenditure of Connecticut; but Berkeley was dissatisfied. A thousand pounds a year would not, he used to say, "maintain the port of his place; no government of ten years' standing but has thrice as much allowed him. But I am supported by my hopes that his gracious majesty will one day consider me."

All branches of the judicial power were appointed, directly or indirectly, by the crown. In each county eight unpaid justices of the peace were commissioned by the governor during his pleasure. These justices held monthly courts in their respective counties. The governor himself and his executive council constituted the highest court, and had cognizance of all classes of causes. Was an appeal made to chancery, it was but for another hearing before the same men; and only a few years longer were appeals permitted from the governor and council to the assembly. The place of sheriff in each county was conferred in rotation on one of the justices for that county.

The county courts, thus independent of the people, possessed and exercised the arbitrary power of levying county taxes, which, in their amount, usually exceeded the public levy. This system proceeded so far that the commissioners of themselves levied taxes to meet their own expenses. In like manner, the self-perpetuating vestries made out their lists of tithables, and assessed taxes without regard to the consent of

the parish. These private levies were unequal and oppressive; were seldom, it is said never, brought to audit, and were, in some cases at least, managed by men who combined to defraud the public.

A series of innovations gradually effected the overthrow of the ancient system of representation. By the members of the first assembly, elected after the restoration for a period of two years only, the law, which limited the duration of their legislative service, and secured the benefits of frequent elections and swift responsibility, was, in 1662, "utterly abrogated and repealed." The parliament of England, chosen on the restoration, was not dissolved for eighteen years; the legislature of Virginia showed its determination to retain power for an indefinite period. Meantime, "the people, at the usual places of election," could not elect burgesses, but only present their grievances to the adjourned assembly.

ents.

The pay of the burgesses had been defrayed by their respective counties; and was thus controlled by their constituThe self-continued legislature, in a law which fixed both the number and the charge of the burgesses, established the daily pay of its own members who had usurped an indefinite period of office, not less than that of its successors, at an amount of tobacco of the value of nine dollars in coin. The burden was intolerable in a new country, where at that time one dollar was equal at least to four in the present day. Discontent was increased by the exemption of councillors from the levies.

The freedom of elections was further impaired by "frequent false returns" made by the sheriffs. Against these the people had no redress, for the sheriffs were responsible neither to them nor to officers of their appointment.

No direct taxes were levied in those days except on polls. Berkeley, in 1663, had urged "a levy upon lands, and not upon heads." If lands should be taxed, none but landholders should elect the legislature, answered the assembly; and added: "The other freemen, who are the more in number, may repine to be bound to those laws they have no representations to assent to the making of. And we are so well acquainted with the temper of the people that we have rea

son to believe they had rather pay their tax than lose that privilege."

But the system of universal suffrage could not permanently find favor with a usurping assembly which labored to reproduce in the new world the inequalities of English legislation. It was discovered that "the usual way of chusing burgesses by the votes of all freemen" produced "tumults and disturbance," and would lead to the "choyce of persons not fitly qualified for so greate a trust." The restrictions adopted in England were cited as a fit precedent for English colonies; and, in 1670, it was enacted that "none but freeholders and housekeepers shall hereafter have a voice in the election of any burgesses." The majority of the people of Virginia were disfranchised by the act of self-constituted representatives.

The unright holders of legislative power in the Old Dominion took care to do nothing for the culture of its people. "The almost general want of schools for their children was of most sad consideration, most of all bewailed of the parents there." "Every man," said Sir William Berkeley, in 1661, "instructs his children according to his ability;" a method which left the children of the ignorant to hopeless ignorance. "The ministers," continued Sir William, "should pray oftener and preach less. But, I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have, these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both."

An assembly by its own vote continuing for an indefinite period at the pleasure of the governor, and decreeing to its members extravagant and burdensome emoluments; a royal governor, whose salary was established by a permanent system of taxation; a constituency restricted and diminished; religious liberty taken away almost as soon as it had been won; arbitrary taxation, in the parishes by close vestries, in the counties by uncontrolled magistrates; a hostility to popular education and to the press-these were the changes which, in a period of ten years, had been wrought by a usurping gov

ernment.

Meantime, the beauty and richness of the province were

becoming better known. Toward the end of May, 1670, the governor of Virginia sent out an exploring party to discover the country beyond the mountains, which, it was believed, would open a way to the South sea. The Blue Ridge they found high and rocky, and thickly grown with wood. Early in June they were stopped by a river, which they guessed to be four hundred and fifty yards wide. It was very rapid and full of rocks, running, so far as they could see, due north between the hills, "with banks in most places," according to their computation, "one thousand yards high." Beyond the river they reported other hills, naked of wood, broken by white cliffs, which in the morning were covered with a thick fog. The report of the explorers did not destroy the confidence that those mountains contained silver or gold, nor that there were rivers "falling the other way into the ocean." the autumn of the next year the exploration of the valley of Kanawha was continued.

In

The restoration of Charles II. was to Virginia a political revolution, reversing, in the interests of monarchy, the principles of popular and religious liberty, and the course of humane legislation on which she had entered during the period of the republic. It seemed to have gained a title to the favor of the king, and yet they found themselves more shamelessly neglected than any one of the more stubborn and less loyal colonies. Their rights and their property were unscrupulously trifled away by the wantonly careless and disreputable exercise of the royal prerogative. In 1649, just after the execution of Charles I., during the despair of the royalists, a patent for the Northern Neck, that is, for the country between the Rappahannock and the Potomac, had been granted to a company of cavaliers as a refuge. About nine years after the restoration, this patent was surrendered, that a new one might be issued to Lord Culpepper, who had succeeded in acquiring the shares of all the associates. The grant was extremely oppressive, for it included plantations which had long been cultivated. But the prodigality of the king was not exhausted. To Lord Culpepper, one of the most cunning and most covetous men in England, at the time a member of the commission for trade and plantations, and to Henry, earl of Arlington, the

best-bred person at the royal court, father-in-law to the king's son by Lady Castlemaine, ever in debt exceedingly, and passionately fond of things rich, polite, and princely, he gave, in 1673, "all the dominion of land and water called Virginia," for the term of thirty-one years.

The usurping assembly, composed in a great part of opulent landholders, was roused by these thoughtless grants; and, in September, 1674, Francis Moryson, Thomas Ludwell, and Robert Smith, were appointed agents to sail for England, and enter on the difficult duty of recovering for the king the supremacy which he had so foolishly dallied away. "We are unwilling," said the assembly, "and conceive we ought not to submit to those to whom his majesty, upon misinformation, hath granted the dominion over us, who do most contentedly pay to his majesty more than we have ourselves for our labor. Whilst we labor for the advantage of the crown, and do wish we could be yet more advantageous to the king and nation, we humbly request not to be subjected to our fellow-subjects, but, for the future, to be secured from our fears of being enslaved." Berkeley's commission as governor had expired; the legislature, which had already voted him a special increase of salary, and which had continued itself in power by his connivance, solicited his appointment as governor for life.

The envoys of Virginia were instructed to ask for the colony the immunities of a corporation which could resist further encroachments, and, according to the forms of English law, purchase of the grantees their rights to the country. The agents fulfilled their instructions, and asserted the natural liberties of the colonists.

We arrive at the moment when almost for the last time the old spirit of English liberty, such as had been cherished by Sir Edwin Sandys and Southampton and Ferrar, flashed up in the government of the Stuarts. Among the heads. of the charter which the agents of Virginia were commanded by their instructions to entreat of the king, it was proposed "that there should be no tax or imposition laid on the people of Virginia but by their own consent, expressed by their representatives in assembly as formerly provided by many acts." "This," wrote Lord Coventry, or one who ex