dismissed and new members elected he would lose control of it. So he adjourned it from one session to another, and year after year called together men whom he could trust to obey his will. A very stubborn and overbearing will it was, opposed to all progress and firmly set against granting rights to common people. He approved of high taxes and did not wish the common people to vote; above all, he opposed public education and the liberty of the press. "I thank God there are no free schools nor printing presses," he said in 1671, "and I hope we shall not have them these hun

There were now about forty thousand people in Virginia, many of whom had been born and reared there. For the most part, they disapproved of Berkeley's high-handed course and of his disregard of the rights and privileges of the colonists. But he was the lawful governor and they were loyal, law-abiding people; probably they would have gone on submitting and grumbling had it not been for the Indian attacks and Governor Berkeley's failure to protect the outlying settlements. Fierce Indian tribes from Pennsylvania had come south; they were now on the borders of the Virginia colony murdering, burning, and pillaging, making life and property unsafe. In the spring of 1676 the House of Burgesses voted to send five hundred men to protect the frontiers, but instead of ordering them to march Berkeley disbanded the little army.

There was at this time in Jamestown an Englishman as brave and resolute as Berkeley himself and as devoted to the rights of the people as Berkeley was to those of the king. This was Nathaniel Bacon. He had been in Virginia only a few months, but he was so popular and so talented that soon after his arrival he was chosen a member of the governor's council.

A few weeks after the governor disbanded the army which should have marched to protect the frontier settlements, Bacon received news that the Indians had attacked his plantation on the James and had killed the overseer and a servant. Immediately he collected a little band of his friends and neighbors and servants, and marched against the Indians. He sent to ask Berkeley for a commission; this was refused and Bacon marched on without it. He defeated the Indians and returned home in triumph.

Governor Berkeley was angry because Bacon had assumed authority without a commission and would have liked to punish him as a traitor. But the sympathies of the people were with the young Englishman; the governor had to give up and in the end had to promise Bacon a commission to fight against the Indians. He delayed drawing up the paper, however, until Bacon at the head of several hundred planters marched to Jamestown and required it by force.

At the head of these troops, Bacon marched from Jamestown into the Indian country. The governor,

meanwhile, declared Bacon a traitor, raised forces, and prepared to fight. Bacon and his men pledged themselves to stand together in defence of the rights of the people. This was in August, 1676, a hundred years before the American Revolution, which, like the Great Rebellion, was undertaken to uphold the people's rights.

When Bacon returned from war with the Indians he found war awaiting him at home. The people of the colony were divided in their interests and sympathies. Some sided with Bacon for people's rights, some sided with Berkeley because that was the cause of the king and lawful authority. There was a stubborn fight in which Bacon was victor and became master of Jamestown. Fearing that they could not hold it and unwilling for it to fall into Berkeley's hands, the rebels burned the town, the capitol of Virginia, the first seat of English power on this continent. It is said that Bacon and other gentlemen who had houses there fired them with their own hands.

Bacon showed no disposition to take power into his own hands, only wishing to put down the tyranny of Berkeley. After a brief course of victory, he died of fever, October, 1676. His followers buried him in the forest and the place of his grave remains unknown to this day.

A few months later, troops from England came as reinforcements to Berkeley. He made himself again master of the colony and took swift and bloody revenge

on his enemies. More than twenty persons were hanged for their share in the rebellion.

"As I live," said Charles II., angrily, when the news reached him," the old fool has put to death more people in that naked country than I did for the murder of my father."

Benjamin Franklin,

A Great Typical American

The men about whom we have been reading were all natives of Europe - Englishmen, Italians, Frenchmen, Dutchmen,— adventurers seeking wealth or power, settlers intent on gaining national or personal power, religious or civil liberty. It is not until the eighteenth century that we come across our first, our great typical American. This is Benjamin Franklin, keen and quick of wit, shrewd and energetic, a man of business and a scholar, a politician and a scientist.

Benjamin Franklin was the son of an English tradesman of plain respectable family, who came to New England in order to enjoy the free exercise of his religion. He made his home in Boston. There Benjamin was born in 1706 and there his childhood was passed. Many incidents of it are familiar to us all. You remember how when he was a child of seven he gave all his pennies for a whistle. But the money was not wasted, for the incident taught him to consider the real value of things and not to spend too much time, thought, or