CHAP. the dominion of land and water, called Virginia," for the full term of thirty-one years.1 XIV. The assembly of Virginia, composed as it was, in part at least, of opulent landholders, were excited to alarm by dangers which were menaced by the thoughtless grants of a profligate prince; and Francis Morryson, Thomas Ludwell, and Robert Smith, were 1674. appointed agents to sail for England, and enter on the difficult duty of recovering for the king that supremacy which he had so foolishly dallied away. "We are Sept. 21. 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 fellowsubjects, but, for the future, to be secured from our fears of being enslaved." Berkeley's commission as governor had expired; the aristocratic 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.3 The envoys of Virginia were instructed to ask for the colony the immunities of a corporation; for a corporation could resist further encroachments, and would be able, according to the forms of English law, to purchase of the grantees their rights to the country. The agents more than fulfilled their instructions. They asserted the natural liberties of the colonists; 1 Hening, i1. 569-583, 427–521. Burk, ii. App. xxxiv., &c. 2 Burk, ii. App. xxxiii. xxxiv. 3 Ibid. xxxix. XIV. claimed, with earnest zeal, an exemption from arbitra- chap. ry taxation; insisted on the indefeasible right of the colonists to the enjoyment of legislative powers, as the birthright of the children of Englishmen ; and fortified their demands by the favor of Coventry, whom they extolled as one of the worthiest of men; by the legal erudition of Jones and Winington, and by the voices of 66 many great friends," won by a sense of humanity, or submitting to be bribed by poor Virginia. But fidelity, justice, and favor, were not enough to secure the object. The agents were detained a twelvemonth without making any progress; the final failure has been ascribed to tidings from Virginia; but there is reason to believe, that a secret influence had been irrevocably exerted against the grant of a charter,* before the news reached England of the events which involved the Ancient Dominion in gloomy disasters. For at the time when the envoys were appointed, Virginia was rocking with the excitements that grew 1674 out of its domestic griefs. The rapid and effectual abridgment of its popular liberties, joined to the uncertain tenure of property that followed the announcement of the royal grants, would have roused any nation; how much more a people like the Virginians! The generation now in existence was chiefly the fruit of the soil; they were children of the woods, nurtured in the freedom of the wilderness, and dwelling in lonely cottages, scattered along the streams. No newspapers entered their houses; no printing-press furnished them a book. They had no recreations but 1 Burk, ii. App. xxxix. and lvii. 2 Ibid. xl. xli. 3 Ibid. xxxix. "Some with, some without charge." 4 Loyd's Letter of April 19, 1676, in Burk, ii. App. xxxvi. He- XIV. CHAP. such as nature provides in her wilds; no education but such as parents in the desert could give their offspring.' The paths were bridleways rather than roads; and the highway surveyors aimed at nothing more than to keep them clear of logs and fallen trees. I doubt if there existed what we should call a bridge in the whole Dominion, though it was intended to build some. Visits were made in boats, or on horseback through the forests; and the Virginian, travelling with his pouch of tobacco for currency, swam the rivers, where there was neither ferry nor ford. Almost every planter was his own mechanic. The houses, for the most part of but one story, and made of wood, often of logs, the windows closed by convenient shutters for want of glass, were sprinkled at great distances on both sides of the Chesapeake, from the Potomac to the line of Carolina. There was hardly such a sight as a cluster of three dwellings. Jamestown was but a place of a statehouse, one church, and eighteen houses,5 occupied by about a dozen families. Till very recently, the legislature had assembled in the hall of an alehouse. Virginia had neither towns nor lawyers. A few of the wealthier planters lived in braver state at their large plantations, and, surrounded by indented servants and slaves, produced a new form of society, that has sometimes been likened to the manners of the patriarchs, and sometimes to the baronial pride of feudalism. The inventory of Sir William Berkeley gave him seventy horses, as well as large flocks of sheep. "Al 1 Berkeley, in Chalmers. 2 Hening, ii. 103. 3 Ibid. Burk, ii. App. xxxiii. 4 Hammond's Lear and Rachel. 8 6 5 Mass. Hist. Coll. xi. 53. 6 Hening, ii. 204. 7 Burk, ii. 159. 8 Document in Burk, ii. 263. XIV. most every man lived within sight of a lovely river."1 CHAP The parish was of such extent, spreading over a tract which a day's journey could not cross, that the people met together but once on the Lord's day, and sometimes not at all; the church, rudely built in some central solitude, was seldom visited by the more remote families, and was liable to become inaccessible by the broken limbs from forest-trees, or the wanton growth of underwood and thickets. Here was a new form of human nature. A love of freedom inclining to anarchy pervaded the country. Among the people, loyalty was a feebler passion than the love of liberty. Existence "without government" seemed to promise to "the general mass"—it is a genuine Virginia sentiment" a greater degree of happiness" than the tyranny "of the European governments." Men feared injustice more than they feared disorder. In Europe, people gathered in towns; here they lived by themselves. In the Old World, even the peasantry crowded together into compact villages. The farmers of Virginia lived asunder, and in their mild climate were scattered very widely, rarely meeting in numbers, except at the horse-race or the county court.4 It was among such a people, which had never been disciplined to resistance by the heresies of sects or the new opinions of "factious" parties, which, till the restoration, had found the wilderness a safe protection against tyranny, and had enjoyed "a fifty years' experience of a government easy to the people," that the pressure of increasing grievances began to excite open discon 1 Hammond's Lear and Rachel. 2 Virginia's Cure, 2, 3. 3 Jefferson's Writings, ii. 85. Yet society without government is 4 Burk, ii. App. xlix. XIV. CHAP. tent. Men gathered together in the gloom of the forests to talk of their hardships. The common people, half conscious of their wrongs, half conscious of the rightful remedy, were ripe for insurrection. A collision between prerogative and popular opinion, between that part of the wealth of the country which was allied with royalism, and the great mass of the numbers and wealth of the country, resting on popular power, between the old monarchical system and the American popular system, was at hand. American freedom had then the principle of life, but was unconscious of its vitality, as the bird that just begins to peck at the shell. Opinions were coming into life; and the plastic effort of modern political being was blindly, but effectually at work.1 1674. On the first spontaneous movement of the common people, the men of wealth and established consideration kept aloof. It is always so in revolutions. The revolt was easily suppressed by the calm advice "of some discreet persons," in whom the people had confidence. Yet the movement was not without effect; the county commissioners were ordered to levy no more taxes for their own emoluments. But as the great abuses continued unreformed, the mutinous discontents of the people were not quieted. The common people were rendered desperate by taxes, which 1675 deprived labor of nearly all its earnings; and the ex1676. citement was increased, when, after a year's patience to 4 under accumulated oppressions, they received from the envoys of the colony, themselves by their heavy expenses a new burden, no hope of a remedy from 1 Bland, in Burk, ii. 247, 151. 3 Hening, ii. 315, 316. 4 Ibid. 539. |