The surface of American society is, if I may use the expression, covered with a layer of democracy, from beneath which the old aristocratic colors sometimes peep.{56}
Endnotes:
{14} The charter granted by the crown of England, in 1609, stipulated, among other conditions, that the adventurers should pay to the crown a fifth of the produce of all gold and silver mines. See Marshall's "Life of Washington," vol i., pp. 18-66.
{15} A large portion of the adventurers, says Stith (History of Virginia), were unprincipled young men of family, whom their parents were glad to ship off, discharged servants, fraudulent bankrupts, or debauchees: and others of the same class, people more apt to pillage and destroy than to assist the settlement, were the seditious chiefs who easily led this band into every kind of extravagance and excess. See for the history of Virginia the following works:—
"History of Virginia, from the first Settlements in the year 1624," by Smith.
"History of Virginia," by William Stith.
"History of Virginia, from the earliest Period," by Beverley.
{16} It was not till some time later that a certain number of rich English capitalists came to fix themselves in the colony.
{17} Slavery was introduced about the year 1620, by a Dutch vessel, which landed twenty negroes on the banks of the river James. See Chalmer.