Thus in 1609 the promoters of the Virginia colony applied for a new charter, in order that a better system of control might be installed. This second charter ended the connection between the London and the Plymouth Companies, and abolished the council which had resided in the colony. Under the new system there was to be only one Council, resident in England, with a Treasurer as managing director. This body was given full power to make all laws and regulations necessary for the government of Virginia, provided that such laws were not inconsistent with those of England, together with authority to rule over the settlers. In Virginia, the authority of the Company was vested in a governor, appointed by the Council in England. The charter was so drawn that the Treasurer could act as the real executive head of both Council and colony.

In 1611, on the strength of this charter, the Council placed the colony under martial law. Everything was organized on a military basis. The men not only carried arms when they went to work, but marched back and forth, in true military style. The regulations, known as Dale's Laws, under which this system was carried into effect, were drawn up by the Council in England and enforced, perhaps not very strictly, by Sir Thomas Dale, the governor. Toward the end of 1618, after about seven years of this rigorous government, the colony numbered about six hundred souls. The Company had spent about eighty thousand pounds, and far from being able to pay any dividends, was then about five thousand pounds in debt. The investors might well have begun to lose faith in American opportunities!

What the colony really needed was not so much change in government as economic reform. During these early years the real problem had been to maintain life itself, and neither the Company nor the settlers had been any too successful in doing so. By 1618, they were beginning to learn how to live in the new world, but a colony that could offer merely a bare existence would never tempt settlers to leave England. It seemed that all the ambitious plans for developing a complex economic life in Virginia had failed, and there was literally nothing for sale that would bring any profit.

ТОВАССО

In 1616 the Company tried the experiment of making small three acre grants of land to individuals, in an effort to encourage industry.

This slight departure from the communistic system worked so well that the size of the grants was soon increased to fifty acres. Now the ambitious colonist found an incentive to work his farm; but he still had no real money crop. Then in 1616 John Rolfe discovered a new way to "cure" the tobacco leaf. This much-criticized-but invaluable luxury was already becoming a necessity to fashionable England; and the new method of curing it solved Virginia's problem. Here was her money crop. Within six years the object of the "wrath of the Lord of Hosts" was showing unmistakable signs of prosperity. Every farmer in Virginia was raising tobacco. In 1619 Virginia exported twenty thousand pounds of tobacco, sixty thousand in 1624, and nearly half a million in 1628. These figures mean little by themselves, but, interpreted in terms of growth, they are highly significant. This extraordinary increase meant more plantations, more settlers, a greater colony in every way. In the course of seven years, from 1622 to 1629, the population increased from fewer than a thousand to about three thousand. At last Virginia was able to produce something that the rest of the world was eager to buy, and farming became a profitable venture. By 1630 she had achieved prosperity, substantial enough in all respects, even though it was "founded on smoke."

Quantity production of tobacco required labor, much more of it than the plantation owner himself was able to furnish. Some of this was secured from so-called "indented" servants, white settlers who were bound out for a limited term of years. Negro slaves also were used, as they were in the Spanish colonies. Just how early the blacks were first introduced is not entirely clear. The earliest reference to them is in 1619, when a Dutch man-of-war sold twenty "negars" to the colony, but others may possibly have come in before that date.

GOVERNMENT

These economic developments were accompanied by equally significant ones in government. In 1618 a liberal-minded, enterprising gentleman, Sir Edwin Sandys, became Treasurer of the Company. He had been profoundly affected by the disputes between James I and Parliament, so much so that he became one of the leading radicals of his day, an enthusiastic believer in representative government. In 1619, under Sandys's direction, the Company authorized the governor of the colony to call a general assembly, which should

include representatives from the various subdivisions of the colony. This representative body, the first that ever met in America, derived all of its powers from the Company, not from the settlers, and its powers were not very extensive.

In 1621, the Company proclaimed a so-called ordinance for the colony, which includes a description of the new legislature. There was to be a Council, appointed by the Treasurer and Council in England. The General Assembly included the Council, and two burgesses for every town, or hundred. This Assembly was to meet, at the call of the governor, once a year. All of its actions were subject to the governor's veto, laws passed must be in harmony with the laws of England, and no measure enacted by it could go into effect until approved by the Company in England. Clearly a legislature hedged around with so many restrictions could not get very far out of hand, and the Company did not propose to give it a chance. In this same ordinance the Company announced its intention, once the system of government was properly established, of giving the General Assembly a negative on the Company's regulations for the colony, a provision which never went into effect. Thus the House of Burgesses was not very different, in its powers, from the earliest Parliaments in England. Parliament met at the call of the king, and transacted the business he laid out for the members. They had no more independent powers of action than the little Virginian assembly. When the old Parliament happened to catch the king in a bad financial predicament, it could make his poverty the means for securing new power for itself, but for the House of Burgesses even this possibility was still so far distant as to be out of sight.

This ordinance of 1621 seems to have been the last constructive act of the London Company. In 1624, the next to the last year of the reign of James I, the king revoked the charter. He had been none too well disposed toward the Company for some time, partly because of its lively interest in tobacco culture. In 1604, James had published, anonymously, his famous Counterblaste to Tobacco, and he never departed from the sentiments therein expressed. Yet, with an inconsistency not unknown in moralists, when he found that the Company was just beginning to make a little money on tobacco, he determined to get a share of it in the form of taxes, to replenish his chronically empty treasury. The refusal of the Company to agree to his terms was one of the causes for the revocation of the charter.

More important reasons for the king's action were to be found in unsatisfactory reports from the colony, and in the liberalism of some members of the Company. The political philosophy of Sir Edwin Sandys, the Treasurer, and of those who supported him, had long been a constant cause of exasperation to James I. Furthermore the Company itself was torn by factional disputes, which furnished the king with additional excuses.

When the charter was revoked the colony was automatically brought under the control of the king. At this particular time it seemed easier to leave the main framework of the government as it was; therefore, more by accident than by design, the system outlined in the Ordinance of 1621 became the model for the royal colony. Henceforth, the governor and Council were appointed by the king; the House of Burgesses was left untouched.

This arrangement seemed to be thoroughly logical and sensible. There were two parties concerned in the government: the king, whose interests would be cared for by the governor and Council; and the voters, who were duly represented in the House of Burgesses. In the course of the next hundred and fifty years this system had ample opportunity to display its elements of weakness, as well as of strength. These will be described in due time. But in spite of the fact that this was the form established by the seventeenth century Stuarts, the Congress of the United States, as late as 1900, paid James I and Charles I the high compliment of installing this very system in Porto Rico.

SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN VIRGINIA

By 1630 or 1635 the colony of Virginia had begun to reveal clearly not only the political, but the economic and social characteristics which persisted in the tidewater region at least until the Revolution. It was almost entirely an agricultural colony, with the plantation as the most obvious feature. Every tobacco grower needed large tracts of land, partly to raise a large crop, because the margin of profit in tobacco was small, partly to guard against serious loss, because tobacco culture rapidly exhausted the soil.

The large estates in turn were responsible for the form of the local institutions in the colony. Because the agricultural system compelled the population to scatter over a wide area, there was no chance to import the English borough, or town system. Consequently the county became the unit of local government and of representation.

Moreover, the plantation system explains the origin of that curious social structure, the Virginian aristocratic democracy, of which William Byrd and George Washington were excellent examples. Because every planter, in the tidewater at least, was as good as his neighbor, all could participate in public affairs on equal terms. And because every planter was an autocrat on his own estate, he had no need of any outside government to attempt to regulate his affairs. He could do that perfectly well himself.

The modern "city prisoner" might well find much to arouse his admiration in the life of these country gentlemen of seventeenth century Virginia. There, on broad estates, and in spacious homes, they were living examples of freedom and independence. And they were not isolated. In their libraries were to be found the best works that England could offer; the eldest son, and perhaps the younger sons as well, were sent as a matter of course to England for university training. Fathers and sons wore clothes made in England, their tables were well provided with fine glass, silver, and linen, and they drank the best of imported wine. With slaves to do their work they had ample time for a pleasant social life and for hunting, horse racing, and gambling. To be sure their accounts with the English merchants who bought their tobacco had sometimes a way of going wrong, but England was a long way off, and their creditors did not embarrass them.

Naturally the planters controlled the government. The most conspicuous among them might confidently expect a place in the Council, while the House of Burgesses was virtually a planters' club. And of course they became justices of the peace or sheriffs or militia officers, so that local as well as colonial government was in their hands. Thomas Jefferson, who was typical of these aristocratic democrats, once prophesied that when commercial and industrial interests came to hold full sway in this country, the people would be far less happy. It is at least possible that he was right.

But even in the seventeenth century there were forces at work in Virginia destined to give a number of rude jolts to this self-satisfied, highly complacent, and withal very admirable aristocracy. As the fertile tidewater lands were gradually occupied, a whole fringe of new communities began to develop in the Piedmont section, beyond the fall line of the rivers. The population in this newer Virginia was recruited from recent English immigrants who lacked the means for