laws were sent to England, where they were regarded as "judiciously carried, but exceeding intricate." They were in truth similar to all regulations passed in new societies, and dealt with local questions which it was necessary to settle; but under all the petty details was the vital fact that at last the representatives of the people had assembled to declare the popular will. A new power was resolutely asserting itself, and even the savages recognized its existence. Opechancanough, who had become Emperor now, sent his petition to the new authority that some corn taken from his people on the Chesapeake might be paid for. That was the past and present face to face the age of Powhatan and the modern world confronting each other. The old Emperor had appealed to club-law and flint-pointed arrows. The new Emperor appealed for protection to an act of Assembly."

66

Smith went away with a depressed heart in 1609, giving up all as lost, and mourning over his futile attempt to found a new society. But he builded better than he knew. Long mouldering under ground, and fated, it seemed, to rot and perish there, life had still lingered in the grain, and here was the result. All the old adversaries hampering him at every step had disappeared. Powhatan, his most dangerous enemy, was dead. The London Council, which he had so long wrangled with, had yielded up its powers to the Company. Virginia was a fact at last, not the mere dream of an enterprising spirit. At Jamestown, where he had cannonaded the rebels, and fed the starving handful, and lived days and nights of peril and anxiety, a peaceful body of legislators had assembled to make laws for a thriving society. In less than ten years from the autumn of 1609 this marvel had been accomplished.

The meeting of the first Assembly in 1619 was followed in 1621 by the formal grant to the Virginians of free government by written charter: "a constitution after their heart's desire," says Beverley. This was the work of Sir Edwin Sandys, the head of the Virginia party, of whom James I. said, when he was spoken of as treasurer, "Choose the devil if you will, but not Sir Edwin Sandys." Under his leadership the Company persisted in their liberal policy. Yeardley's ill health forced him to decline a new appointment. Sir Francis Wyat, a young gentleman of high character, was sent out as Governor; and when he reached Virginia, in October, 1621, he brought the new charter with him.

This old "Ordinance and Constitution" for a Council of State and General Assembly in Virginia is still preserved. Its tone is large and noble. The intent is "by the divine assistance to settle such a form of government as may be to the greatest benefit and comfort of the people, and whereby all injustice, grievances, and oppression may be prevented and kept off as much as possible from the said colony." The Governor is to have a Council to assist him in the administration. He and the Council, together with Burgesses chosen, two from every town, hundred, and plantation, by the inhabitants, are to constitute a General Assembly, who are to meet yearly, and decide all matters coming before them by the greatest number of voices; but the Governor is to have a negative voice. No law of the Assembly is to be or continue in force unless it is ratified by a General Court, and returned to them under the Company's seal. But when the government of the colony is once "well framed and settled accordingly

no orders of court afterwards shall bind the said colony unless they be ratified in like manner in the General Assemblies."

This paper bore date July 24, 1621, and is the first charter of free government in America.

XX.

THE MAIDS AND FIRST SLAVES.

ABOUT the moment when Virginia thus secured the immense boon of virtual free government, slavery came. This ominous event was preceded by another, which created a great social change the arrival of a ship's cargo of "maids" to become wives of the colonists. Let us notice, in the first place, the more agreeable incident of the two.

The "maids," as the chronicle styles them, came at the instigation of Sir Edwin Sandys. This wise statesman, now at the head of the Company, devised the plan of sending out a number of respectable young women to marry the Virginia adventurers. He had shown his warm interest in the colony in many ways. What it wanted was immigration, and he took energetic steps to supply it. In one year he sent out twelve hundred and sixty-one new settlers, to whom King James I. added a hundred convicted felons. The Virginia party in the Company protested against this outrage, and the Virginians were bitterly indignant when they found that this poisonous element was to be infused into their society even as servants. But the King persisted, and the felons came. And now with the increasing immigration came a more urgent demand than ever that social order

turers "

in the colony should be established on a firm basis. A great change had taken place. In the early years the voyagers to far-off Virginia had been simply "advenmen adventuring to seek their fortunes, but with no intention of settling and passing the remainder of their lives in the new land. They looked upon the country as a place in which they would make no long tarrying, and neither brought their families with them nor established their homes there. They hoped to return in a few years, with improved fortunes, to England; but this was not the spirit that founds new commonwealths. Sandys clearly saw that unless Virginia was looked upon as home the enterprise would miscarry, and the best means of making it such was plain to him. What the Virginians required as a stimulus to exertion was to have wives and children depending upon them. With these they would perform honest labor cheerfully, and not look back toward England when the hand was on the plow. Wife and child would make the home in the new land what home had been in the old.

The result was that ninety young women were sent out by Sandys as wives for the settlers persons of unexceptionable character, who had volunteered for the purpose. A singular feature of the arrangement was that their husbands were to purchase them. The expenditure of the Company in sending them was considerable, and it was required that those who selected them, or were selected by them, should repay the cost of their outfit and passage. This was fixed at one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco about eighty dollars. On payment of that amount the settler was entitled to a wife.

The whole scheme, which is apt to strike the reader

of to-day as somewhat comic, was entered into by Sandys and his associates in the most earnest spirit. In their regulations for the government of the colony, the Company made strong distinctions in favor of married

men.

To prevent all objection, the purity of the feminine supply was jealously guarded, and two of the number who transgressed were sent back to England. Every safeguard was thrown around them to make them happy in their new homes. It was ordered: "In case they cannot be presently married, we desire that they may be put with several householders that have wives until they can be supplied with husbands.

... We desire that the marriage be free, according to nature, and we would not have these maids deceived and married to servants, but only such freemen or tenants as have means to maintain them, not enforcing them to marry against their wills."

These orders went in the ship with the maids, and seem to have been strictly obeyed. The scheme succeeded to a marvel: there was no difficulty at all in the way of being "presently married." On the arrival of the ship the settlers flocked to Jamestown, and the curious spectacle was presented of suitors going about in the crowd of maids, and selecting or being selected by their future wives. The arrangement seems to have caused no embarrassment, and the odd wooing was soon ended. Offers were made and matches agreed to without loss of time. The men paid for their partners, and were married to them at once; and the happiest results followed. "These new companions were received with such fondness" that they wrote to England, and induced sixty other maids, "young, handsome and chaste," to come out to Virginia for the same purpose.