A sharp rebuke.
It is time for our narrative to return to Virginia, where in June, 1710, just a hundred years after the coming of Lord Delaware, there arrived upon the scene one of the best and ablest of all the colonial governors. Alexander Spotswood was a member of the old and honourable Scottish family which took its name from the barony of Spottiswoode, in Berwick. His great-great-grandfather had been archbishop of St. Andrews and chancellor of Scotland. His great-grandfather, Sir Robert Spottiswoode, as secretary of state, had signed the commission of Montrose, for which he was beheaded by the Covenanters in 1646.[315] Alexander himself had been brought up from childhood in the army, where he had seen some hard fighting. Already at the age of eight-and-twenty he had attained the rank of colonel, and in that year received an ugly wound at Blenheim. Six years after that great battle he arrived in Virginia, a tall, robust man, with gnarled and wrinkled face and an air of dignity and power. He was greeted at Williamsburg with more than ordinary cordiality, because he brought with him a writ confirming the claim of the Virginians that they were as much entitled as other Englishmen to the privilege of habeas corpus. Notwithstanding this auspicious reception he had a good many wrangles with his burgesses, chiefly over questions of taxation, and sometimes talked to them quite plainly. On one occasion when, during the Yamassee war in Carolina, he requested an appropriation for a force to be sent in aid of their southern neighbours, he found the burgesses less liberal than he wished and expected. They pleaded the poverty of the country as an excuse for not doing more. The governor’s retort was a telling one, and might be applied with effect to many a modern legislative body. If they felt the poverty of the country so keenly, why did they persist in sitting there day after day and drawing their pay, while they wasted the country’s time in frivolities without passing laws that were much needed? for in the last five-and-twenty days only three bills had come from them. At the end of a stormy session he addressed them still more sharply: “To be plain with you, the true interest of your country is not what you have troubled your heads about. All your proceedings have been calculated to answer the notions of the ignorant populace; and if you can excuse yourselves to them, you matter not how you stand before God, or any others to whom you think you owe not your elections. In fine, I cannot but attribute these miscarriages to the people’s mistaken choice of a set of representatives whom Heaven has not ... endowed with the ordinary qualifications requisite to legislators; and therefore I dissolve you!”[316]
In spite of this stinging tongue Spotswood was greatly liked and respected for his ability and honesty and his thoroughly good heart. He was a man sound in every fibre, clear-sighted, shrewd, immensely vigorous, and full of public spirit. One day we find him establishing Indian missions; the next he is undertaking to smelt iron and grow native wines; the next he is sending out ships to exterminate the pirates. For his energy in establishing smelting furnaces he was nicknamed “The Tubal Cain of Virginia.” For the making of native wines he brought over a colony of Germans from the Rhine, and settled them in the new county named for him Spottsylvania, hard by the Rapidan River, where Germanna Ford still preserves a reminiscence of their coming.
The Post-office Act.
Some of Spotswood’s disputes with the assembly brought up questions akin to those which agitated the country half a century later, in the days of the Stamp Act. A recent act of Parliament had extended the post-office system into Virginia, whereupon the burgesses declared that Parliament had no authority to lay any tax (such as postage) upon the people of Virginia without the consent of their representatives; accordingly they showed their independence by exempting from postage all merchants’ letters. But we may let Spotswood speak for himself: “Some time last Fall the Post M’r Gen’ll of America, having thought himself Obliged to endeavour the Settling a post through Virginia and Maryland, in ye same manner as they are settled in the other Northern Plantations, pursu’t to the Act of Parliament of the 9th of Queen Anne, gave out Commissions for that purpose, and a post was accordingly established once a fortnight from W’msburg to Philadelphia, and for the Conveyance of Letters bro’t hither by Sea through the several Countys. In order to this, the Post M’r Set up printed Placards (such as were sent in by the Post M’r Gen’ll of Great Britain) at all the Posts, requiring the delivery of all Letters not excepted by the Act of Parliament to be delivered to his Deputys there. No sooner was this noised about but a great Clamour was raised against it. The people were made to believe that the Parl’t could not Levy any Tax (for so they call ye Rates of Postage) here without the Consent of the General Assembly. That, besides, all their Laws[317] were exempted, because scarce any came in here but what some way or other concern’d Trade; That tho’ M’rs should, for the reward of a penny a Letter, deliver them, the Post M’r could Demand no Postage for the Conveyance of them, and abundance more to the same purpose, as rediculous as Arrogant.... Thereupon a Bill is prepared and passed both Council and Burg’s’s, w’ch, tho’ it acknowledges the Act of Parliam’t to be in force here, does effectually prevent its being ever put in Execution. The first Clause of that Bill Imposes an Obligation on the Post Master to w’ch he is no ways liable by the Act of Parliament. The second Clause lays a Penalty of no less than £5 for every Letter he demands or takes from a Board any Ships that stand Decreed to be excepted by the Act of Parliament; and the last Clause appoints ye Stages and the time of Conveyance of all Letters under an Extravagant Penalty. As it is impossible for the Post Master to know whether the Letters he receives be excepted or not, and y’t, according to the Interpreters, Our Judges of the Act of Parl’t, all Letters sent from any Merch’t, whether the same relate to Merchandize on board or not, are within the exception of the Law, the Post M’r must meddle w’th no Letters at all, or run the hazard of being ruin’d. And the last Clause, besides its Contradiction to the Act of Parliament in applying the Stages, w’ch is expressly Bestowed to the Post Master according to the Instruction of the Soveraign, is so great an impossibility to be complyed w’th that, considering the difficulty of passing the many gr’t Rivers, the Post M’r must be liable to the penalty of 20s. for every Letter he takes into his care during the whole Season of the Winter. From whence yo’r Lo’ps may judge how well affected the Major part of Our Assembly men are towards ye Collecting this Branch of the King’s Revenue, and w’ll therefore be pleas’d to Acquitt me of any Censure of Refusing Assent to such a Bill.”[318]
Appointment of parsons.
With an assembly so adroit and so stubborn, the way of the postmaster was hard indeed. Another source of irritation was the question as to appointing parsons. In practice they were appointed by the close vestries, but the governor wished to appoint them himself. It also appeared that the king’s ministers would like to send a bishop to Virginia. On these questions the worthy Spotswood got embroiled with eight of the councilmen as well as with the burgesses, and complained of being rather shabbily treated: “When in Order to the Solemnizing his Maj’ty’s Birth-day,[319] I gave a publick Entertainment at my House, all gent’n that would come were Admitted; These Eight Counsellors would neither come to my House nor go to the Play w’ch was Acted on that occasion, but got together all the Turbulent and disaffected Burg’s’s, had an Entertainment of their own in the Burg’s House and invited all ye Mobb to a Bonfire, where they were plentifully Supplyed with Liquors to Drink the same healths without as their M’rs did within, w’ch were chiefly those of the Council and their Associated Burg’s, without taking any [more] Notice of the Gov’r, than if there had been none upon the place.”[320]
Beginning of continental politics.
In such disputes between the legislatures chosen at home and the executive officials appointed beyond sea, Virginia, like the sister colonies in their several ways, was getting the kind of political education that bore fruit in 1776. In Virginia the appointment of clergymen over parishes, in Maryland the forty per poll for a church to which only one sixth of the people belonged, in Massachusetts the perennial question of the governor’s salary,—all these were occasions for disputes about matters of internal administration in which far-reaching principles were involved. Other questions, like that of postage just mentioned, showed that gradually but surely and steadily a continental state of things was coming on. From the Penobscot to the Savannah there was a continuous English world, albeit a strip so narrow that it scarcely anywhere reached inland more than a hundred and fifty miles from the coast. The work of establishing postal communication throughout this region seemed to require some continental authority independent of the dozen local colonial legislatures. We see Parliament, with the best of intentions, stepping in and exercising such continental authority; and we see the Virginians resisting such action, on the ground that in laying the species of tax known as postage rates Parliament was usurping functions which belonged only to the colonial legislatures. Thus did the year 1718 witness a slight presage of 1765.
Beginning of the seventy years’ struggle with France.