who had settled in Virginia since the ill-fated Eleanor Dare. There were also eight Poles and Germans, who were intended to make pitch, glass, and soap-ashes. In fact it seemed as if the Company considered that the first band under Wingfield were pioneers to lay the foundation of a settlement, and as if the real social and economical life of the colony was now to begin.

The Com

for imme

At the same time the Company expressed its dissatisfaction with the paltry results hitherto achieved, in a letter addressed to Smith. To this he replied in a temperate and sensible pany eager tone, reminding the Company of the difficulties which diate gain. beset an infant colony, and the impossibility of at once assuring the prosperity and stability of the settlement, and obtaining profitable results. The dispute illustrates the dangers which attend an undertaking like that of the Virginia Company. Such a body can seldom, if ever, raise its aims above immediate gain, or regard the permanent welfare of the settlement as more than a secondary object. The dealings of the Virginia Company with its servants in the time of Sir Thomas Smith are not unlike those of the East India Company in its early days. Its servants are at once instructed to administer affairs with a strict view to justice and to the good of the community, and to satisfy the demands of the shareholders. There is not much doubt which half of the instruction will be accepted as the more important. The Company's orders to Newport furnished another example of the mischief caused by the need of some immediate and showy result. He was instructed to discover either a lump of gold, a passage to the South Sea, or some of Raleigh's lost colonists. The labor devoted to any one of these objects would have been far better spent in building houses, clearing ground, and growing corn. Another point in Newport's orders excited Smith's indignation, perhaps with less justice. He was furnished with certain presents for Powhatan, valuable according to the standard of a savage, and was instructed to go through the ceremony of formally crowning the Indian chief. The latter was an idle piece of formality, like the creation of a Virginian peerage for the benefit of Manteo. But the English policy towards Powhatan had at least the merit of winning and retaining the loyalty of the savage. After the ceremony of Powhatan's coronation had been accomplished, not without some reluctance on the part of the chief

1 Smith's answer is published in his History, p. 70. From this it is easy to gather the general subject of the Company's remonstrance.

? Smith, p. 66.

THE VIRGINIA COMPANY.

125

performer, Newport set forth on his exploration. No discovery either of the South Sea, the lost colonists, or gold rewarded his labors, and he returned to Jamestown after an uneventful journey which bore no fruit, either for good or ill. In the mean time Smith was more usefully employed in freighting the ship with timber and wood-ashes, and in testing the possibility of manufacturing pitch and glass. Soon after Newport's return the ship sailed, carrying Smith's remonstrance to the Company. Amongst those who returned was Ratcliffe, whose unpopularity, if Smith is to be believed, made it unsafe for him to stay in the colony." Hitherto the founders and supporters of the colony had little cause to congratulate themselves on their success. From an

Prospects of the colony in England.

2

economical point of view, the profits had been as good as could be reasonably expected, far better, indeed, when we consider the material of which the colony was made. But in every other respect the result was utterly discouraging. The history of the settlement almost from the time it left Plymouth had been a succession of quarrels. As might have been foreseen, the air of Virginia could work no charm to turn wild spendthrifts into hard-working settlers. The colony had been saved from famine, perhaps from massacre, by the energy and courage of one man. In the short space of a year and a half, two Presidents had been deposed. What wonder if, in the plays of the day, Virginia figured as a Transatlantic Alsatia, the last refuge of the destitute and dishonest. But the influences at work on behalf of this colony were strong enough to overcome the discouragements, and the men who had undertaken to settle Virginia were not to be laughed out of their scheme, or disheartened by a single failure. The critical nature of the occasion

1 Our knowledge of Newport's voyage is derived from Smith's History. Had the expedi tion been conducted by Smith himself, some more impressive episodes would probably be recorded.

8 lb., p. 72.

• Smith, p. 70. 4 We find in the contemporary pamphlets on behalf of Virginia, more than one remon. strance with the play-writers of the day for their disrespectful treatment of Virginia. Thus in the New Life of Virginia, published in 1612, by authority of the Council for Virginia, and republished in Force, vol. i., we read how "The malitious and looser sort (being accompanied with the licentious vaine of stage poets) have whet their tongues with scornful taunts against the action itselfe." Strachey again, in a prayer drawn up apparently for the use of the colony, and published in Force, vol. iii., denounces "Sanballats and Tobias, Papists and Players, and such like Amorites and Heronites, the scum and dregs of the earth." The only passage I have met with to which these charges are applicable is in Fletcher's The Noble Gentleman, Act 1, Sc. i., where a husband being asked to bring his wife to court, says :"Sir, I had rather send her to Virginia

To help to propagate the English Nation."

A little later Virginia figured not ungracefully in more than one mask.

seems to have roused them to fresh efforts. The year 1609 saw an outburst of energy and activity from which the beginning of English colonization may be almost said to date. Sermons were preached, and pamphlets published, putting forward the claims of the colony. From one of the latter, entitled "Nova Britannia," we may form a good idea of the nature of these appeals. The writer, probably himself one of the original shareholders, sets forth the charms of Virginia, its fertility, its stores of minerals and timber, of silk and furs. "The natives are generally very loving, and do entertain and relieve our people with great kindness." He then dwells on "the swarms of idle persons which having no means of labour to relieve their misery, do likewise swarme in lewde and naughty practices, so that if we seeke not some waies for their forreine employment, we must provide shortly more prisons and corrections for their bad conditions." Recent experience might have shown that bad subjects at home become worse in a colony. The writer, however, qualifies his statement. "I do not mean that none but such unsound members, and such poor as want their bread, are fittest for this employment." Especially would the colony be valuable as opening a fresh market for English cloth and "raising againe of that ancient trade of clothing so much decayed in England." Our navigation is to revive, and the glories of the last reign are to return. "We shall not still betake ourselves to small and little shipping as we daily do beginne, but we shall rear againe such Marchants Shippes both tall and stout, as no forreine sayle that swimmes shall make them vayle or stoop; whereby to make this little northern corner of the world to be in a short time the richest storehouse and staple for marchandise in all Europe."

the consti

tution of the Company.

If these soaring hopes were to be fulfilled, the whole organization of the colony needed to be shaped afresh. One great deChange in fect in the existing constitution was that it withheld all share in the management of the colony from the real promoters, the patentees, and entrusted it to a body of men who were in no wise specially interested in the success of the undertaking. Moreover, it was clear that the control of the emigrants must be vested in men of greater influence and higher station than Smith and Wingfield. It was evident, too, that the system of double government, by two Councils, one resident and the other non-resident, was thoroughly unsatisfactory. In the

I Republished in Force, vol. i.

THE COMPANY RECONSTITUTED.

127

spring of 1609, a new system was established remedying these evils. Who was the immediate author of the change does not appear. On the 23d of May, a charter was granted to the Company, constituting it a corporation, and specifying all its members by name.1 Every rank, profession, and trade supplied representatives. The list is headed by Salisbury, and the name of Bacon appears here as it does in the East India Company. The subscriptions were not confined to individuals, as all, or nearly all, of the London companies appear in the list. Taken altogether, the constitution of the company betokens a wide-spread interest and confidence in the success of the undertaking. By this charter the extent of the plantation was more exactly defined than by the former instrument. It was to extend along the coast two hundred miles on each side of Cape Comfort, and inland for one hundred miles. The whole constitution of the colony and the company was remodeled. The government was vested in a Treasurer and Council, composed of members of the company. Sir Thomas Smith was appointed Treasurer. The Council was to be originally nominated by the king, but vacancies in it were to be filled up by a vote of the whole company. All legislative power, and the right to appoint colonial officers, was vested in the Council. The company was given full sovereignty over all British subjects who might settle in Virginia. It had the right to export settlers, and was to enjoy immunity from all duties, except five per cent. customs, for twenty-one years. It was also empowered to wage defensive war by sea and land, and to exact a duty upon all imports and exports of five per cent. from British subjects, and ten per cent. from aliens, the proceeds as before to accrue to the company for twenty-one years, and then to the Crown. Virtually the company was established as an independent community governed by a representative body.

The best idea of the plans of the company, and of the system on which it was constructed, may perhaps be gained from the pamphlet to which I have already referred. The stock was to be taken up in shares of 127. 10s. each. Personal emigration in the service of the company was to be equivalent to the price of one share. All "extraordinary men," divines, public officers, physicians and others, were to receive a certain number of shares proportioned to the supposed value of their services. The proceeds

I This document is to be found in the Col. Entry Book, lxxix. p. 49, and in the Appendix to Stith.

were to be spent upon the settlement, and the surplus was either to be divided or funded for seven years. During that period the settlers were to be maintained at the expense of the company, while all the product of their labors was to be cast into the common stock. At the end of that time every shareholder was to receive a grant of land in proportion to his stock held. Those shares which had been taken up later than 1609 were to suffer a proportionate diminution. The company, as thus designed, was to be a vast joint-stock farm or collection of farms worked by servants who were to receive, in return for their labor, all their necessaries and a share in the proceeds of the undertaking. How far the company contemplated the possibility of private farms in the territory under their jurisdiction seems doubtful. The provision of the charter which empowered the company to levy duty on all imports and exports, would seem to suppose the possibility of private trade, and the records seem to show faint traces of such undertakings.

At first one is inclined to think that the company would have done better to allot private holdings of land at once, reserving for themselves rents and custom duties, or to adopt a system of métayer tenure, and in either case to have trusted the future of the colony to the stimulus of private enterprise. But it must be remembered that the company deliberately laid its account to managing what was little better than a penal settlement. Many of the emigrants were sure to be men who could be made to work by nothing short of a slave-gang system. If the company had kept to the plan on which they started, Virginia never could have become a flourishing community, but it is not at all certain that they did not, from a merely economical and commercial point of view, act with wisdom.

To such good purpose did the friends of the colony plead its cause, both in the press and the pulpit, that, in spite of the somewhat discouraging conditions of service, five hundred emigrants were collected. The character of the

The voyage of 1609.1

I We have two contemporary accounts of this voyage and of the discovery of the Bermudas, both written by men who took part in the voyage. One is by William Strachey, and is entitled A true Report of the Wrecke and Redemption of Sir Thomae Gates, Knight, upon and from the Ilands of the Bermudas, his coming to Virginia, and the estate of that Colonie then and after under the government of the Lord La Ware, published in Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1734. The other is entitled A Plain Description of the Bermudas, published in 1615 and republished, Force, vol. iii. Strachey's account is written in a style of considerable literary pretension. It is at times turgid, but on the whole powerful and graphic. The other account is a far more homely performance and perhaps the more trustworthy of the two.