THE FIRST REPRESENTATIVE ASSEMBLY

31

nowhere more than six miles wide, curving up the James for a hundred miles. Industry was still in common, except for the slight beginning of private tillage under Dale; and martial law was still the prevailing government.

According to his instructions Yeardley at once introduced three great reforms.

1. He established private ownership, giving liberal grants of land to all free immigrants. A large part of the settlers continued for some time to be "servants" of the Private Company, and these were employed as before on ownership the Company's land. But each of the old free planters now received 100 acres; each servant was given the same amount when his term of service expired; and each new planter thereafter was to receive 50 acres for himself and as much more for each servant he brought with him. Grants of many hundred acres were made, too, to men who rendered valuable service to the colony. For many years, all grants were in strips fronting on rivers up which ships could ascend.

A return to

2. Dale's code of martial law was set aside. Yeardley proclaimed, said a body of settlers later, "that those cruell lawes by which we had soe longe been governed were abrogated, and that we were now to be gov- the promises erned by those free lawes which his Majesties sub- of the jects live under in Englande." This was merely to keep the pledge of the charters.

charters

3. The settlers received a share in the government. A Representative Assembly was summoned, "freely to be elected by the inhabitants, . . . to make and Representaordaine whatsoever lawes and orders should by tive governthem be thought good and profitable." This political privilege was a new thing.

ment

The First Representative Assembly in America met at Jamestown, August 9 (New Style), 1619. It was not purely representative. Each of the eleven plantations The Assent two delegates; but in the same "House" sembly of with these elected "Burgesses" sat the governor and his Council (seven or eight in number), appointed

1619

from England. We have no account of the elections. No doubt they were extremely informal. Of the thousand people in the colony, seven hundred must have been "servants" without a vote; and, of the three hundred free persons, a fraction were women and children. Probably there were not more than two hundred voters. These were distributed among eleven plantations, in some of which the only voters must have been the foreman and employees of a rich proprietor.

The Assembly opened with prayer, and slipped with amazing ease into the forms of an English parliament. It "verified credentials" of the delegates, and it gave all bills "three readings." Laws which to-day would be stigmatized as "Blue Laws" were passed against drunkenness, gambling, idleness, absence from church, "excess in apparel," and other misdemeanors. For that age, the penalties were light. The Church of England was made the established church; and aid was asked from the Company toward setting up a college. With all this business, the Assembly sat only six days.

And its

This beginning of representative government in the wilderness has a simple grandeur and a striking significance. Virginia had been transformed from a significance "plantation colony," ruled by a despotic overseer, into a self-governing political community. The pioneers manifested an instinct and fitness for representative government, a zest for it, and a deep sense of its value. It came as a gift; but, once given, it could not be withdrawn.1 Jury trial and representative government were both established upon a lasting foundation in America in 1619, while Virginia was the only English colony. These two bulwarks

Many American writers speak as though the colonists had created the Assembly. Thomas Hutchinson (History of Massachusetts Bay, 94, note) said that in 1619 representative government "broke out" in Virginia; and Story, in his great Commentaries on the Constitution (I, § 166), said that the Assembly was "forced upon the proprietors" by the colonists. Influenced by such earlier authorities, John Fiske (Old Virginia, I, 186) explains the Assembly on the ground that "the people called for self-government." But this view is contrary to all evidence. For a good statement, see Channing, United States, I, 204. For the ardor, however, with which the settlers maintained the privilege, in contrast to French indifference, see pp. 37-39 below.

of freedom were not then known in any large country except in England; and they were not to take root in the colonies of any other country for more than two hundred years. Their establishment in Virginia made them inevitable in all other English colonies.

The" char

settlers

A charter to the settlers established still more firmly the grant of self-government. Yeardley put before the Assembly a long document from the Company. The Assembly called it a "Great Charter," and ex- ter of 1618" amined it carefully, "because [it] is to binde us to the and our heyers forever." This "charter of 1618" has been lost, but the Assembly's Records show that it guaranteed a representative Assembly. It was wholly different from royal grants to proprietors in England: it was the first of many charters and "concessions" issued by the proprietors of various colonies to settlers in America, in order to set up ideals of government or to attract settlers. From this time it became customary for colonial proprietors, when circulating handbills in England advertising the features of their American possessions, to lay stress upon the guarantee of political privileges.

The new management of the Company bestirred itself to build up the colony on the material side also. To supply the labor so much needed, Sandys (the Paternal "Treasurer," or President) sought throughout care by the England for skilled artisans and husbandmen, and Company in shipped to Virginia many hundred "servants." Several cargoes of young women, too, were induced to go out for wives to the settlers, and supplies of all kinds were poured into the colony with a lavish hand.

England

This generous paternalism was often unwise. Effort and money were wasted in trying to produce glass, silk, and wine, - so that England might no longer have to buy such commodities from foreigners — while the main industry that was to prove successful, tobacco raising, had to win its way against the Company's frowns. Moreover, pestilence and hardship continued to kill off a terrible proportion of the

people. In the first three years after Yeardley's arrival, more than three thousand new settlers landed; but in March, 1622, of the population old and new, only some twelve hundred survived, and that spring an Indian massacre swept away a third of that little band.

In spite of all this, Virginia became prosperous under the Company's rule. Two years after the massacre, the population had risen again to twelve hundred, and the number of settlements had become nineteen. The Indians had been crushed. Fortunes were being made in tobacco, Tobacco and the homes of the colonists were taking on an air of comfort. The period of experiment was past, and the era of rapid growth had just been reached. During the following ten years (1624-1634) the population grew fourfold, to more than five thousand people, organized in eight counties.

makes the colony selfsupporting

Tobacco for export was first grown in 1614, on the plantation of John Rolfe, who had married the Indian girl Pocahontas. The Company always discouraged its cultivation -on moral as well as business grounds. Smoking was looked upon much as indulgence in liquor is now. King James wrote a tract against the practice, and even later King Charles warned the Virginians not to "build on smoke." Tobacco, however, found a steady sale in Europe at high prices; and before 1624 Virginians knew they had found a paying industry. Thereafter the colony needed no coddling.

Meanwhile King James became bitterly hostile to the liberal management of the Company. Sandys was particularly King James obnoxious. He was prominent in parliament in and Sandys opposing the King's arbitrary policy, and was reported to be "the king's greatest enemye." More than once he had been committed to custody by royal order. An envious business associate testified that "there was not any man in the world that carried a more malitious hearte to the government of a Monarchie than Sir Edwin Sandys did," and that Sandys had said repeatedly that he "aymed to make a free popular state there [in Virginia] in which the

...

KING JAMES ATTACKS THE LIBERAL COMPANY 35

people should have noe government putt upon them but by their owne consents."

When Sandys' term expired, in 1620, King James sent to the "General Court" of the Company the names of four men from whom he ordered them to elect a new

Royal' at

Treasurer. The Company (some hundreds of tempts to the best gentlemen of England present) remon- control the strated firmly against this interference with the Company freedom of election guaranteed by their charter; and

Hat the manifold abufes of this vile cuftome of Tobacco taking, may the better be efpied, it is fit, that firft you enter into confideration both of the first originall thereof, and likewife of the reafons of the first entry thereof into this Countrey. For certainely as fuch cuftomes, that haue their firit inftitution either from a godly, neceffary,or honourable ground, and are firft brought in, by the meanes of fome worthy, vertuous, and great Perfonage,are cuer,and moft iuftly, holden in great and reuerent eftimation and account, by all wife, vertuous, and temperate fpirits: So fhould it by the contrary, iuftly bring a great difgrace into that fort of cu

BEGINNING OF KING JAMES' TRACT: a facsimile from his Complete Works, London, 1616.

James yielded, exclaiming petulantly, "Choose the Devil, an ye will; only not Sir Edwin Sandys!" Sandys then withdrew his name; and the Company sent a committee to his friend, the Earl of Southampton,' the liberal leader 1 This was Shakspere's Southampton, of course.