"It is to us to-day a matter of profound gratitude that these the earliest American lawgivers were eminently worthy their high vocation. While confounding, in some degree, the separate functions of government, as abstractly defined at a later day by Montesquieu, and eventually put in concrete form in our fundamental laws, State and Federal—it is none the less true that these first legislators clearly discerned their inherent rights as a part of the English-speaking race. More important still, a perusal of the brief records they have left, impresses the conviction that they were no strangers to the underlying fact that the people are the true source of political power, the evidence whereof is to be found in the scant records of their proceedings—a priceless heritage of all future generations. And first—and fundamental in all legislative assemblies—they asserted the absolute right to determine as to the election and qualification of members. Grants of land were asked, not only for the planters, but for their wives, 'as equally important parts of the colony.' It was wisely provided that of the natives 'the most towardly boys in wit and the graces' should be educated and set apart to the work of converting the Indians to the Christian religion; stringent penalties were attached to idleness, gambling, and drunkenness; excess in apparel was prohibited by heavy taxation; encouragement was given to agriculture in all its known forms; while conceding 'the commission of privileges' brought over by the new Governor as their fundamental law, yet with the liberty-guarding instinct of their race they kept the way open for seeking redress, 'in case they should find aught not perfectly squaring with the state of the colony.' No less important were the enactments regulating the dealings of the colonists with the Indians. Yet to be mentioned, and of transcendent importance, was the claim of the burgesses 'to allow or disallow,' at their own good pleasure, all orders of the court of the London Company. And deeply significant was the declaration of these representatives of three centuries ago, that their enactments were instantly to be put in force, without waiting for their ratification in England. And not to be forgotten is the stupendous fact that while the battle with the untamed forces of nature was yet waging, and conflict with savage foe of constant recurrence, these legislators provided for the maintenance of public worship, and took the initial steps for the establishment of an institution of learning. It is not too much to say that the hour that witnessed these enactments witnessed the triumph of the popular over the court party; in no unimportant sense, the first triumph of the American colonists over kingly prerogative. Looking through the mists of the mighty past, Mr. Speaker, to the House of Burgesses, over which your first predecessor presided, would it be out of place to apply to that assemblage the historic words spoken of one of a later period: 'Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand'?
"Did the occasion permit, it would be of wondrous interest to linger for a time with these, the earliest colonies in this, the cradle of American civilization; to know something of their daily life, their hopes and ambitions, their struggles and triumphs; something of their ceaseless vigil and of the perils that environed them; to recall stirring incidents and heroic achievements; to catch a gleam of a spirit of self-sacrifice and devotion which in all the annals of men scarcely finds a parallel. It would be of curious interest to watch the parade and pomp of governors and councils of royal appointment in attempted representation of a pageantry familiar to the Old World, but which was to have no permanent abiding place in the New. Governors and their subordinates—though bearing the royal commission, yet in rare instances to be classed only as bad or indifferent—pass in long procession before us into the dim shadows. But out of the mists of this long past, two figures emerge that have for us an abiding interest, John Smith and Pocahontas—names that have place not alone in romance and song, but upon the pages of veritable history.
"Colonial governors strutted their brief hour upon the stage and have long passed to oblivion; but Smith, the intrepid soldier, the ever-present friend and counsellor of the early colonists, their stalwart protector—alike against the bullet of the savage and the mandate of official power—will not pass from remembrance so long as heroic deeds are counted worthy of enduring record among men.
"With dark background of rude cabin and wigwam, of scantily appointed plantation, and of far-stretching forest—with its mysterious voices and manifold perils—there passes before us the lovely form of the beautiful Indian maiden, the daughter and pride of the renowned native chieftain. So long as courage and fidelity arouse sympathy and admiration, so long will the thrilling legend of Pocahontas touch responsive chords in human hearts. Its glamour is upon the early pages of colonial history; her witchery lingers upon stream and forest, and the firm earth upon which we tread seems to have been hallowed by her footsteps.
"A name that sheds lustre upon the earliest pages of our Colonial history is that of Sir Edwin Sandys. Under his courageous leadership, what was known as the Virginia or Liberal party in the London Company obtained a signal triumph over that of the court. The result was the formal grant to the colony guaranteeing free government by written charter. Its declared purpose was to secure 'the greatest comfort and benefit to the people and the prevention of injustice, grievances, and oppression.' It provided for full legislative authority in the Assembly, and was with some modifications the model of the systems subsequently introduced into the other English colonies.
"By this charter, representative government and trial by jury became recognized rights in the New World. Upon this charter, as has been truly said, 'Virginia erected the superstructure of her liberties.'
"The coming of this charter marked an epoch in the history of the Jamestown colony, and set the pace for English-speaking settlements yet in the future.
"It was in very truth the first step in the direction of the establishment of the great Republic which was to be the enduring beacon-light of self-governing people in all future ages.
"To a full appreciation of the supreme significance of the mighty event we to-day celebrate and its results—now constituting so inspiring a chapter of history—some account must be taken of conditions then existing in the mother country. While obtaining the guarantee of a large measure of self-government for the New World, Sir Edwin Sandys and his co-patriots were unable to secure that which even savored of liberal administration in the Old. James—the first of the Stuart Dynasty—was upon the English throne. In narrow, selfish state-craft his is possibly in the long list of sovereigns without a rival. The exercise and maintenance of royal prerogative was with him the 'be all and end all' of government, and, abetted by the sycophants about him, he unwittingly laid the train of inexorable events that were to culminate in the execution of one and the banishment of another of his line. His claim was that of absolute power, and during a reign of twenty-two years—extending from the death of Queen Elizabeth to the year 1625—he was the unrelenting foe of whatever pertained to freedom in religion or in government. His apparent indifference to the execution of his mother—the ill-fated Mary, Queen of Scots—and his condemnation of the illustrious Sir Walter Raleigh to the scaffold, are alone sufficient to render the memory of this monarch forever infamous. It is a marvel, indeed, that with James the First upon the throne, and popular freedom in such a low state throughout his immediate realm, that so large a measure of liberty should have been conceded to the distant colony. The achievement is the enduring evidence of unsurpassed courage in the men in whose immediate keeping were the early fortunes of the Virginia colony, and sheds unfading lustre upon their memories.
"Nor can it be forgotten that from the masterful hour that witnessed the assembling of the first House of Burgesses until the abdication of James the Second, the welfare of the Virginia colony was in large measure in the iron grasp of stern antagonists to all that pertained to liberty of conscience and to popular rule. Whatever there was of progress during the seventy years—barring the brief period of the Commonwealth—that immediately preceded the historic English Revolution, and the crowning of William and Mary, was despite the untiring hostility of the Stuart Dynasty. During this period the lives of Englishmen at home were as the dust in the balance. It witnessed the very heyday of the infamous Star Chamber. It was of Strafford, the bloody instrument (though wearing judicial ermine) of Charles the First, that Macaulay said: 'If justice, in the whole range of its wide armory, contained one weapon which could pierce him, that weapon his pursuers were bound, before God and man, to employ.'