These differences are striking and profound. There can be no doubt that, as Thomas Jefferson clearly saw, in the long run the interests of political liberty are much safer under the New England system than under the Virginia system. Jefferson said: “Those wards, called townships in New England, are the vital principle of their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its preservation.[29] ... As Cato, then, concluded every speech with the words Carthago delenda est, so do I every opinion with the injunction: ‘Divide the counties into wards!’”[30]
“Court day.”
We must, however, avoid the mistake of making too much of this contrast. As already hinted, in those rural societies where people generally knew one another, its effects were not so far-reaching as they would be in the more complicated society of to-day. Even though Virginia had not the town meeting, “it had its familiar court-day,” which “was a holiday for all the countryside, especially in the fall and spring. From all directions came in the people on horseback, in wagons, and afoot. On the court-house green assembled, in indiscriminate confusion, people of all classes,—the hunter from the backwoods, the owner of a few acres, the grand proprietor, and the grinning, heedless negro. Old debts were settled, and new ones made; there were auctions, transfers of property, and, if election times were near, stump-speaking.”[31]
Virginia prolific in great leaders.
For seventy years or more before the Declaration of Independence the matters of general public concern, about which stump speeches were made on Virginia court-days, were very similar to those that were discussed in Massachusetts town meetings when representatives were to be chosen for the legislature. Such questions generally related to some real or alleged encroachment upon popular liberties by the royal governor, who, being appointed and sent from beyond sea, was apt to have ideas and purposes of his own that conflicted with those of the people. This perpetual antagonism to the governor, who represented British imperial interference with American local self-government, was an excellent schooling in political liberty, alike for Virginia and for Massachusetts. When the stress of the Revolution came, these two leading colonies cordially supported each other, and their political characteristics were reflected in the kind of achievements for which each was especially distinguished. The Virginia system, concentrating the administration of local affairs in the hands of a few county families, was eminently favourable for developing skilful and vigorous leadership. And while in the history of Massachusetts during the Revolution we are chiefly impressed with the remarkable degree in which the mass of the people exhibited the kind of political training that nothing in the world except the habit of parliamentary discussion can impart; on the other hand, Virginia at that time gave us—in Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Mason, Madison, and Marshall, to mention no others—such a group of leaders as has seldom been equalled.
CHAPTER XI.
BACON’S REBELLION.
The Navigation Act of 1651.
The rapid development of maritime commerce in the seventeenth century soon furnished a new occasion for human folly and greed to assert themselves in acts of legislation. Crude mediæval methods of robbery began to give place to the ingenious modern methods in which men’s pockets are picked under the specious guise of public policy. Your mediæval baron would allow no ship or boat to pass his Rhenish castle without paying what he saw fit to extort for the privilege, and at the end of his evil career he was apt to compound with conscience and buy a ticket to heaven by building a chapel to the Virgin. Your modern manufacturer obtains legislative aid in fleecing his fellow-countrymen, while he seeks popularity by bestowing upon the public a part of his ill-gotten gains in the shape of a new college or a town library. This change from the more brutal to the more subtle devices for living upon the fruits of other men’s labour was conspicuous during the seventeenth century, and one of the most glaring instances of it was the Navigation Act of 1651, which forbade the importation of goods into England except in English ships, or ships of the nation that produced the goods. This foolish act was intended to cripple the Dutch carrying trade, and speedily led to a lamentable and disgraceful war between England and Holland. In its application to America it meant that English colonies could trade only with England in English ships, and it was generally greeted with indignation. Cromwell, however, did little or nothing to enforce it in America. Charles II.’s government was more active in the matter and soon became detested. One of the earliest causes of the American Revolution was thus set in operation. The policy begun in the Navigation Act was one of the grievances that kept Massachusetts in a chronic quarrel with Charles II. during the whole of his reign, and it was a source of no less irritation in Virginia.
The second Navigation Act.