Upon the death of Cromwell, the House of Burgesses unaniMarch, 1659. mously recognised his son Richard, and adopted an address praying a confirmation of their former privileges, in which address the governor was required to join, after solemnly acknowledging, in the presence of the whole Assembly, that the supreme power of electing officers was, by the present laws, resident in the Grand Assembly; which was alleged to be required for this reason, that what was their privilege now might belong to their posterity hereafter.

Matthews died, leaving the colony of Virginia without a goverMarch, 1660. nor, about the same time that the resignation of Richard Cromwell left England without a head. In this emergency the Assembly, reciting that the late frequent distractions in England preventing any power from being generally confessed; that the supreme power of the colony should be vested in the Assembly, and that all writs should issue in its name, until such a command and commission should come from England as should by the Assembly be adjudged lawful. Sir William Berkeley was then elected governor, with the express stipulation that he should call an Assembly once in two years at least, and should not dissolve the Assembly without its own consent. This old royalist, probably thinking now that there was a prospect of the restoration, accepted the office under the prescribed conditions, and acknowledged himself to be but the servant of the Assembly.

During the suspension of the royal government in England, Virginia attained unlimited liberty of commerce, which they regulated by independent laws. The ordinance of 1650 was rendered void by the act of capitulation; the navigation act of Cromwell was not designed for her oppression, and was not enforced within her borders. Only one confiscation appears to have taken place, and that was entirely by the authority of the Grand Assembly. The war between England and Holland necessarily interrupted the intercourse of the Dutch with the English colonies; but, if after the treaty of peace the trade was considered contraband, the English restrictions were entirely disregarded. 1655. Commissioners were sent to England to undeceive Cromwell with regard to the

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course Virginia had taken with reference to the boundary of Maryland, with regard to which he had been misinformed; and to present a remonstrance demanding unlimited freedom of trade; which, it appears, was not refused, for some months before the Protector's death, the Virginians invited the Dutch and all foreigners" to trade with them on payment of no higher duty than that which was levied on such English vessels as were bound for a foreign port. Proposals of peace and commerce between NewNetherland and Virginia were discussed without scruple by the respective colonial gov. ernments; and at last a special statute of Virginia extended to every Christian nation, in amity with England, a promise of liberty of trade and equal justice.

At the restoration, Virginia enjoyed freedom of com1660. merce with the whole world. Virginia was the first state in the world composed of separate townships, diffused over an extensive surface, where the government was organized on the principle of universal suffrage. All freemen, without exception, were entitled to vote. The right of suffrage was once restricted, but it was soon after 1656. determined to be "hard and unagreeable to reason, that any person shall pay equal taxes and yet have no vote in the election;" and the electoral franchise was restored to all freemen.

1655.

Servants, when the time of their bondage was completed, at once became electors; and might be chosen burgesses. Thus Virginia established upon her soil the supremacy of the popular branch, the freedom of trade, the independence of religious societies, the security from foreign taxation, and the universal elective franchise. If in the following years she departed from either of these principles, and yielded a reluctant consent to change, it was from the influence of foreign authority. Virginia had herself established a nearly independent democracy. Prosperity advanced with freedom; dreams of new staples and infinite wealth were indulged; while the population of Virginia at the epoch of the restoration may have been about thirty thousand. Many of the recent emigrants had been royalists in England, good officers in the war, men of education, of property, and of condition. But the waters of the Atlantic divided them from the political strifes of Europe; their industry was employed in making the best advantage of their plantations; the interests and liberties of Virginia, the land which they adopted as their country, were dearer to them than the monarchical principles which they had espoused in England; and therefore no bitterness could exist between the partisans of the Stuarts and the friends of republican liberty. Virginia had long been the home of its inhabitants-" Among many other blessings,' said their statute-book, "God Almighty hath vouchsafed increase of children to this colony; who are now multiplied to a considerable number;" and the huts in the wilderness were as full as the birds' nests of the woods.

The genial climate and transparent atmosphere delighted those who had come from the denser air of England. Every object in nature was new and wonderful.

The hospitality of the Virginians became proverbial. Labor was valuable; land was cheap; competence promptly followed industry. There was no need of a scramble; abundance gushed from the earth for all. The morasses were alive with water-fowl; the forests were nimble with game; the woods rustled with covies of quails and wild turkeys, while they sung with the merry notes of the singing birds; and hogs, swarming like vermin, ran at large in troops. It was "the best poor man's country in the world." "If a happy peace be settled in poor England," it had been said, "then they in Virginia shall be as happy a people as any under heaven." But plenty encouraged indolence. No domestic manufactures were established; every thing was imported from England. The chief branch of industry, for the purpose of exchanges, was tobacco planting; and the spirit of invention was enfeebled by the uniformity of pursuit.

CHAPTER V.

BACON'S REBELLION-HOSTILE DESIGNS OF THE FRENCH.

Indifference to change in England.-Navigation Act.-Convicts.-Conspiracy detected. -Discontents.-Cessation from tobacco planting for one year.-Royal grants.Virginia's remonstrance.-Success of deputies.-Indian hostilities.-Army raised and disbanded by governor.-People petition for an army-elect Bacon commander -he marches without commission and defeats Indians-pursued by governor, who retreats on hearing of rising at Jamestown.-Governor makes concessions.--Bacon prisoner-is pardoned.-People force commission from governor.-Bacon marches to meet Indians-hears he is declared a rebel by Berkeley-marches to meet him-he flees to Accomac.-Convention called and free government established.--Bacon defeats the Indians.-Berkeley obtains possession of the shipping, and occupies Jamestown-is besieged by Bacon, and driven out.-Jamestown burnt-Death of Baconcharacter of his enterprise.-Predatory warfare-treaty between governor and his opponents.-Cruelty of Berkeley.-King's commissioners.-Departure of Berkeley, and his death.--Acts of Assembly passed during Bacon's influence.--Conduct of king's commissioners.-Culpeper governor.--Discontents.-Conduct of Beverly.Howard governor-General conduct of Virginia and progress of affairs.-Plan of Callier for dividing the British colonies.

As Virginia had provided for herself a government substantially free, the political changes in England could have little effect upon her repose, provided no attempt was made to interfere with the freedom of her trade, or her local government. She seemed content to be under the protection, rather than control, of whatever power the people of England thought proper to place at the head of affairs, provided that power did not seek to extend the conceded authority. In this mood she had adhered to Charles I. until the Parliament, by its commissioners, promised a preservation of all her privileges; she acknowledged Cromwell upon a similar promise, and his son Richard under the same idea; upon his resignation she held herself aloof, thus proving how perfect and how independent was her own local government, until the voice of England should declare who should rule; and upon the accession of Charles II. she gave in her allegiance to him. As in all these British changes she remained unconcerned and unmoved, so the last caused neither extraordinary joy nor regret. The colonists, thus free from external sources of uneasiness, proceeded to legislate upon internal matters; providing rewards for the encouragement of silk and other staples; negotiating with Carolina and Maryland for the adoption of uniform measures for the improvement of tobacco, and diminishing its quantity; and providing for the erection of public buildings, the improvement of Jamestown, and other subjects of general utility.

While the colonists were proceeding in this useful occupation,

they were alarmed by the intelligence of the re-enaction 1663. of the navigation act, odious with new prohibitions, and armed with new penalties. The Virginians had long enjoyed a very beneficial trade with other countries besides England, and had early perceived its advantages, often urging the propriety of

its continuance, and contending that "freedom of trade was the life of a commonwealth." But the object of the navigation act was to confine its trade exclusively to England, for the encouragement of English shipping, and the emolument of English merchants, as well as the promotion of the king's revenue; without regard to the gross injury done to the colony by depriving her of the benefit of competition in her harbors. The colony remonstrated in vain, and continued boldly her trade with all such foreigners as would venture to encounter the risk of being taken by the English cruisers, and encountering the penalties of the act.

It appears to have been for some time the practice to send felons and other obnoxious persons to the colony, to expiate their offences by serving the planters for a term of years. At the restoration many of the veteran soldiers of Cromwell, to whom it was anticipated the return of the ancien régime would not be particularly palatable, were shipped to Virginia to work off their spleen in the cultivation of tobacco. It appears that this new business was not as agreeable to them as they had found the psalm-singing and plundering of the royalists, under the command of their devout leader; and they accordingly quickly organized an insurrection, by the operation of which they were to change places with such of their masters as were left alive by the process. But this outbreaking, which seems to have been well planned and extensively organized, was prevented by the compunction of one of their associates, who disclosed the whole affair to the governor the evening before it was to have gone into effect; and adequate means were taken to prevent the design. Four of the conspirators

Feb. 13. were executed. But this evil of importing jail-birds, as they were called, increased to such an extent that it was prohibited by the General Court, in 1670, under severe penalties.

The increase in the amount of tobacco raised by the increase of the colony and the settlement of Maryland and

June 5, 1666. Carolina, far outstripped the increase of taste for it, rapid as that was, and caused such a glut of the commodity that its price fell to an amount utterly ruinous to the planter. In this the exclusive privilege of purchase which England enjoyed, notwithstanding the extensive contraband trade, no doubt largely contributed; but this the planters could not prevent, and their only remaining resource was in diminishing the amount of tobacco raised. To effect this various schemes had been devised, but they were all liable to be evaded, and were, if successful, too partial in their operation to effect the object desired. Nothing could be efficient, short of a total cessation from planting for one year, and this was at last accomplished after long negotiations with Maryland and Carolina.

Many other staples had been recommended from time to time to the planters, and even encouraged by bounties and rewards, and this year, it was thought, would give them more, leisure to attend to the subject. But it is not probable that many engaged in the

occupations proposed, which required the investment of capital, the acquisition of skill, and the aid of time to render them profitable; and the year's leisure only served to increase the growing discontent, especially as towards its end Maryland began to be suspected of bad faith.

There were other causes of discontent which probably prevailed between different classes of society. Loud complaint was made of the manner in which taxes were levied, entirely on persons without regard to property, which, as there must have been a very large class of poor free persons now existing, from the frequent emancipation, and expiration of the terms of those who came over as servants, besides those who were free but poor when they came to the country, must have created considerable excitement. An effort was made to remedy this evil by laying a tax on property, but ineffectually; the only result being a small export duty on tobacco, in aid of the general revenue.

While the taxes bore thus hard upon the poorer portion of the community, they also had just reason to complain of exclusion from the right of suffrage by an act of 1670, and from the Legislature, to which none but freeholders could be chosen; as well as of the enormous pay which the Burgesses appropriated to themselves, of one hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco per diem, and one hundred for their horses and servants. The forts were also complained of as a source of heavy expenditure, without any benefit; their chief use, indeed, being rather injurious, as they kept off traders who violated the navigation acts.

But these evils in domestic legislation were trivial, compared with those produced by the criminal prodigality of Charles, who wantonly made exorbitant grants to his favorites of large tracts of lands, without a knowledge of localities, and consequently without regard to the claims or even the settlements of others. To cap the climax of royal munificence, the gay monarch, in, perhaps, a merry mood, granted to Lords Culpeper and Arlington the whole colony of Virginia, for thirty-one years, with privileges effectually royal as far as the colony was concerned, only reserving some mark of homage to himself. This might be considered at court, perhaps, as a small bounty to a favorite, but was taken in a very serious light by the forty thousand people thus unceremoniously transferred. The Assembly, in its extravagance, only took from them a great proportion of their profits; but the king was filching their capital, their lands, and their homes, which they had inherited from their fathers, or laboriously acquired by their own strenuous exertion.

The Legislature sent three deputies to England, to remonstrate with the king against these intolerable grants, to endeavor to procure his assent to some charter which might secure them against such impositions for the future; and if they should fail in the first of these objects, to endeavor to buy out the rights of the patentees. To bear the expense of these three deputies, Mr. Ludwell, Mr.