issued writs for an assembly in the name of the king. The sovereignty over itself, which Virginia had exercised so well, was at an end.

The assembly, chosen in 1661, was composed of large landholders and cavaliers, in whom attachment to colonial life had not mastered the force of English usages. Of the assembly of 1654, not more than two members were elected; of the assembly of March, 1660, of which an adjourned meeting was held in October, the last assembly elected during the interruption, only eight were re-elected to the first legislature of Charles II., and, of these eight, not more that five retained their places. New men came in, bringing with them new principles. The restoration was, for Virginia, a political revolution.

The "first session" of the royalist assembly was held in March, 1661. One of its earliest acts disfranchised a magistrate "for factious and schismatical demeanors."

The assembly, alarmed at the open violation of the natural and prescriptive "freedoms" of the colony by the navigation act, appointed Sir William Berkeley its agent, to present its grievances and procure their redress through the favor of its sovereign. The New England states, from the perpetual dread of royal interference, persevered in soliciting charters, till they were obtained; Virginia, unhappy in her confidence, lost irrevocably the opportunity of obtaining a liberal patent.

The Ancient Dominion was equally unfortunate in the selection of its agent. Sir William Berkeley did not, even after years of experience, understand the act against which he was deputed to expostulate. We have seen that he had obtained for himself and partners a dismemberment of the territory of Virginia; for the colony he did not secure one franchise; the king employed its loyalty to its injury. At the hands of Charles II., the democratic colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut received greater favor.

For more than a year the navigation act was virtually evaded; mariners of New England, lading their vessels with tobacco, did but touch at a New England harbor on the sound, and immediately sail for New Amsterdam. But this relief was partial and transient. The act of navigation could easily be executed in Virginia, because it had few ships of its own,

and no foreign vessel dared to enter its ports. The unequal legislation pressed upon its interests with intense severity. The number of the purchasers of its tobacco was diminished; and the English factors, sure of their market, grew careless about the quality of their supplies. To the colonist as consumer, the price of foreign goods was enhanced; to the colonist as producer, the opportunity of a market was narrowed.

Virginia long but vainly attempted to devise a remedy against the commercial oppression of England. It was the selfishness of the strong exercising tyranny over the weak; no remedy could be found so long as the state of dependence continued. The burden was the more intolerable, because it was established exclusively to favor the monopoly of the English merchant; and its avails were all abandoned to the officers to stimulate their vigilance.

Thus, while the rising aristocracy of Virginia was seeking the aid of royal influence to confirm its supremacy, the policy of the English government oppressed colonial industry so severely as to unite the province in opposition. The party which joined with the king in its desire to gain a triumph over democratic influences was always on the point of reconciling itself with the people, and making a common cause against the tyranny of the metropolis.

At the restoration, the extreme royalist party acquired the ascendency; and the assembly effected a radical change in the features of the constitution. The committee which was appointed in 1662 to reduce the laws of Virginia to a code repealed the milder laws that she had adopted when she governed herself. The English Episcopal church became once more the religion of the state; and though there were not ministers in above a fifth part of the parishes, so that "it was scattered in the desolate places of the wilderness without comeliness," yet the laws demanded strict conformity, and required of every one to contribute to its support. For assessing parish taxes, twelve vestrymen were to be chosen in each parish, with power to fill all vacancies in their own body. The control in church affairs passed from the parish to a close corporation, which the parish could henceforward neither alter nor overrule. The whole liturgy was required to be thoroughly read; no non-con

formist might teach, even in private, under pain of banishment; no reader might expound the catechism or the scriptures. The obsolete severity of the laws of Queen Elizabeth was revived against the Quakers; their absence from church was made punishable by a monthly fine of twenty pounds sterling. To meet in conventicles of their own was forbidden under further penalties. In April, 1662, they were arraigned before the court as recusants. "Tender consciences," said Owen, "must obey the law of God, however they suffer." "There is no toleration for wicked consciences," was the reply of the court. The reformation had diminished the power of the clergy by declaring marriage a civil contract, not a sacrament; Virginia suffered no marriage to be celebrated but according to the rubric in the Book of Common Prayer.

Among the plebeian sects of Christianity, the single-minded simplicity with which the Baptists had, from their origin, asserted the enfranchisement of mind and the equal rights of the humblest classes of society, naturally won converts in America. In December, 1662, the legislature of Virginia, assembling soon after the return of Berkeley from a voyage that had been fruitless to the colony, declared to the world that there were scattered among the rude settlements of the Ancient Dominion "many schismatical persons, so averse to the established religion, and so filled with the new-fangled conceits of their own heretical inventions, as to refuse to have their children baptized;" and the novelty was punished by a heavy mulct. The freedom of the forests favored originality of thought; in spite of legislation, men listened to the voice within themselves as to the highest authority; and Quakers continued to multiply. In September, 1663, Virginia, as if resolved to hasten the colonization of North Carolina, sharpened her laws against all separatists, punished their meetings by heavy fines, and ordered the more affluent to pay the forfeitures of the poor. The colony that should have opened its doors wide to all the persecuted, punished the ship-master that received non-conformists as passengers, and threatened resident dissenters with banishment. John Porter, the burgess for Lower Norfolk, was expelled from the assembly, "because he was well affected to the Quakers."

The legislature was equally friendly to the power of the crown. 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