3. The English navigation laws.
4. The tendency toward oligarchical government which had been rapidly growing since the beginning of the great influx of Cavaliers in 1649.
How far Bacon represented public sentiment in Virginia.
Under the first three heads little need be said. The facts have been generally recognized. It was by Bacon’s zeal and success in suppressing the Indian power that he acquired public favour. As for the peculation and extortion practised or permitted by Berkeley, it cannot for a moment be supposed that such men as John Washington, Richard Lee, etc., were inclined to tolerate or connive at it. As for the navigation laws, it was a common remark, after the oath at Middle Plantation, that now Virginians might look forward hopefully to trading with all countries. It is therefore altogether probable that on all these grounds the public sentiment of Virginia was overwhelmingly on the side of Bacon.
The leading families were in general opposed to him.
Under the fourth head some explanation is needed, for historians have generally overlooked or disregarded it. One of the most conspicuous facts in the story of Bacon’s rebellion is the fact that a great majority of the wealthiest and most important men in the colony were opposed to him from first to last. The list of those who were pillaged by his followers is largely a list of the names most honoured in Virginia, the great-grandfathers of the illustrious men who were among the foremost in winning independence for the United States and in building up our federal government. It is also largely a list of the names of Cavaliers who had come from England to Virginia since 1649. The political ideas of these men were surely not democratic. If they were devout disbelievers in popular government, the fact is in nowise to their discredit. Popular government is still on its trial in the world, and the last word on the subject has not yet been said. In our day the men who do the most to throw discredit upon it are often those who prate most loudly in its favour; political blatherskites, like the famous “Colonel Yell of Yellville,” whose accounts were sadly delinquent though his heart beat with fervour for his native land. The Cavaliers who came to Virginia were staunch and honourable men who believed—with John Winthrop and Edmund Burke and Alexander Hamilton—that society is most prosperous when a select portion of the community governs the whole. Such a doctrine seems to me less defensible than the democratic views of Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson and Herbert Spencer, but it is still entitled to all the courtesies of debate. Two centuries ago it was of course the prevailing doctrine.
Political changes since 1660; the close vestry.
Restriction of the suffrage.
In the preceding chapter I pointed out that the period of Cavalier immigration, between 1650 and 1670, was characterized by a rapid increase in the dimensions of landed estates and in the employment of servile labour. The same period witnessed a change of an eminently symptomatic kind in local government. In any state the local institutions are the most vitally important part of the whole political structure. Now, as I have already mentioned,[60] the English parish was at an early time reproduced in Virginia, and its authority was exercised by a few chosen men, usually twelve, who constituted a vestry. At first, and until after 1645,[61] the vestrymen were elected by the people of the parish, so that they were analogous to the selectmen of New England. A vestry thus elected is called an open vestry. Now soon after the Long Assembly had begun its sessions in 1661, in the fall tide of royalist reaction, we find on its records a statute which transformed the open vestry into a close vestry. In March, 1662, it was enacted that “in case of the death of any vestryman, or his departure out of the parish, ... the minister and vestry make choice of another to supply his room.”[62] The speedy effect of this was to dispense with the popular election and to convert the vestry into a self-perpetuating close corporation. When we consider the great powers wielded by the vestry, we realize the importance of this step. The vestry made up the parish budget, apportioned the taxes, and elected the churchwardens, who were in many places the tax-collectors. By its “processioning of the bounds of every person’s land,” the vestry exercised control over the record of land-titles. Its supervision of the counting of tobacco was also a function of no mean importance. The vestry also presented the minister for induction. All the local government not in the hands of the vestry was administered by the county court, which consisted of eight justices appointed by the governor. So that when the people lost the power of electing vestrymen they parted with the only share they had in the local government.[63] Nothing was left them except the right to vote for burgesses, and not only was this curtailed in 1670 by a property qualification, but it was of no avail while the Long Assembly lasted, since during those fifteen years there were no elections. That political power should thus rapidly become concentrated in the hands of the leading families was under the circumstances but natural. That the deprivation of suffrage was by many people felt to be a grievance is unquestionable.[64] No testimony can outweigh that of the statute book, and two of the notable acts of Bacon’s assembly in June, 1676, were those which restored universal suffrage and the popular election of vestrymen, and limited the terms of service of vestrymen to three years. The first assembly after the rebellion, which met at Green Spring in February, 1677, with Augustine Warner as speaker, declared all the acts of Bacon’s assembly null and void. Then in the course of that year and the three years following several of those wholesome acts were reënacted, especially those which related to exorbitant fees and the misuse of public money. Great pains were taken to guard against extortion and corruption,[65] but the provisions concerning vestrymen were not reënacted. A law was passed allowing the freeholders and housekeepers in each parish to elect six “sober and discreet” representatives to sit with the vestry and have equal votes with the vestrymen in assessing the parish taxes; in case the parish should neglect to choose such representatives, or in case they should fail to appear at the time appointed, the vestry was to proceed without them.[66] This act seems to have had little effect, and the law of 1662, which created the close vestry, still remained law after more than a century had passed.[67] As for the right to vote for burgesses, the royal instructions received from Charles II. in January, 1677, restricted it to “ffreeholders, as being more agreeable to the custome of England, to which you are as nigh as you conveniently can to conforme yourselves.”[68] According to the same instructions the assembly was to be called together only once in two years, “unlesse some emergent occasion shall make it necessary;” and it was to sit “ffourteene days ... and noe longer, unlesse you find goode cause to continue it beyond that tyme;” qualifications which could easily be made to defeat the restriction.
How the aristocrats regarded Bacon’s followers.