By common consent of historians, the two most distinctive and most characteristic lines of development which English forms of government have followed, in propagating themselves throughout the United States, are the two lines that have led through New England on the one hand and through Virginia on the other. We have seen what shape local government assumed in New England; let us now observe what shape it assumed in the Old Dominion.
[Sidenote: Virginia sparsely settled.] The first point to be noticed in the early settlement of Virginia is that people did not live so near together as in New England. This was because tobacco, cultivated on large estates, was a source of wealth. Tobacco drew settlers to Virginia as in later days gold drew settlers to California and sparsely Australia. They came not in organized groups or congregations, but as a multitude of individuals. Land was granted to individuals, and sometimes these grants were of enormous extent. John Bolling, who died in 1757, left an estate of 40,000 acres, and this is not mentioned as an extraordinary amount of land for one man to own.[7] From an early period it was customary to keep these great estates together by entailing them, and this continued until entails were abolished in 1776 through the influence of Thomas Jefferson.
[Footnote 7: Edward Channing, "Town and County Government," in Johns Hopkins University Studies, vol. ii. p. 467.]
[Sidenote: Absence of towns.] A glance at the map of Virginia shows to what a remarkable degree it is intersected by navigable rivers. This fact made it possible for plantations, even at a long distance from the coast, to have each its own private wharf, where a ship from England could unload its cargo of tools, cloth, or furniture, and receive a cargo of tobacco in return. As the planters were thus supplied with most of the necessaries of life, there was no occasion for the kind of trade that builds up towns. Even in comparatively recent times the development of town life in Virginia has been very slow. In 1880, out of 246 cities and towns in the United States with a population exceeding 10,000, there were only six in Virginia.
[Sidenote: Slavery] The cultivation of tobacco upon large estates caused a great demand for cheap labour, and this was supplied partly by bringing negro slaves from Africa, partly by bringing criminals from English jails. The latter were sold into slavery for a limited term of years, and were known as "indentured white servants." So great was the demand for labour that it became customary to kidnap poor friendless wretches on the streets of seaport towns in England and ship them off to Virginia to be sold into servitude. At first these white servants were more numerous than the negroes, but before the end of the seventeenth century the blacks had come to be much the more numerous.
[Sidenote: Social position of settlers.] In this rural community the owners of plantations came from the same classes of society as the settlers of New England; they were for the most part country squires and yeomen. But while in New England there was no lower class or society sharply marked off from the upper, on the other hand in Virginia there was an insurmountable distinction between the owners of plantations and the so-called "mean whites" or "white trash." This class was originally formed of men and women who had been indentured white servants, and was increased by such shiftless people as now and then found their way to the colony, but could not win estates or obtain social recognition. With such a sharp division between classes, an aristocratic type of society was developed in Virginia as naturally as a democratic type was developed in New England.
[Sidenote: Virginia parishes.] [Sidenote: The vestry of a close corporation.] In Virginia there were no town-meetings. The distances between plantations cooperated with the distinction between classes to prevent the growth of such an institution. The English parish, with its churchwardens and vestry and clerk, was reproduced in Virginia under the same name, but with some noteworthy peculiarities. If the whole body of ratepayers had assembled in vestry meeting, to enact by-laws and assess taxes, the course of development would have been like that of the New England town-meeting. But instead of this the vestry, which exercised the chief authority in the parish, was composed of twelve chosen men. This was not government by a primary assembly, it was representative government. At first the twelve vestrymen were elected by the people of the parish, and thus resembled the selectmen of New England; but after a while "they obtained the power of filling vacancies in their own number," so that they became what is called a "close corporation," and the people had nothing to do with choosing them. Strictly speaking, that was not representative government; it was a step on the road that leads towards oligarchical or despotic government.
[Sidenote: Powers of the vestry.] It was the vestry, thus constituted, that apportioned the parish taxes, appointed the churchwardens, presented the minister for induction into office, and acted as overseers of the poor. The minister presided in all vestry meetings. His salary was paid in tobacco, and in 1696 it was fixed by law at 16,000 pounds of tobacco yearly. In many parishes the churchwardens were the collectors of the parish taxes. The other officers, such as the sexton and the parish clerk, were appointed either by the minister or by the vestry.
With the local government thus administered, we see that the larger part of the people had little directly to do. Nevertheless in these small neighbourhoods government was in full sight of the people. Its proceedings went on in broad daylight and were sustained by public sentiment. As Jefferson said, "The vestrymen are usually the most discreet farmers, so distributed through the parish that every part of it may be under the immediate eye of some one of them. They are well acquainted with the details and economy of private life, and they find sufficient inducements to execute their charge well, in their philanthropy, in the approbation of their neighbours, and the distinction which that gives them." [8]
[Footnote 8: See Howard, Local Constitutional History of the United
States, vol. i. p. 122.]