FIRST MEETING OF THE ASSEMBLY IN VIRGINIA.
In 1621, Sir George Yeardley was succeeded as governor by Sir Edward Wyatt, who carried out with him a written constitution, ratifying in the main the form of government established by Yeardley. The form of constitution prescribed was similar to that of England, and remained to be the model of all other Anglo-American governments. Its purport was declared to be “the greatest comfort and benefit to the people, and the prevention of injustice, grievances, and oppression.” A more sound basis than this for any government could not have been devised. A governor and permanent council were to be appointed by the company; a general assembly was to meet yearly, consisting of the members of the council, and delegates chosen by the people as their representatives, two for each borough, the colony being divided into eleven boroughs. All enactments of the General Assembly, however, required, to become valid, the ratification of the company in England. It was further ordained—and this gave the greatest satisfaction perhaps of all—that after the government of the colony had once become established, no orders of the company in London should be valid unless ratified by the General Assembly of the colony. The courts of justice were to be constituted according to the laws and mode of trial established in England.
Representative government and trial by jury were established in America; and the colonists, no longer depending on a commercial corporation, now became enfranchised citizens. “Henceforth,” says Bancroft, “the supreme power was held to reside in the hands of the colonial parliament, and of the king, as king of Virginia. This ordinance was the basis on which Virginia erected the superstructure of her liberties. Its influences were wide and enduring, and can be traced through all following years of the history of the colony. It constituted, in its infancy, a university of freemen; and succeeding generations learned to cherish institutions which were as old as the first period of the prosperity of their fathers. The privileges which were now conceded could never be wrested from the Virginians, and as new colonies arose at the south, their proprietaries could hope to win emigrants only by bestowing franchises as large as those enjoyed by their older rival.”
In the month of August, 1620, fourteen months before the sitting of the first representative assembly in Virginia, about four months before the landing of the pilgrim fathers in America, a century after the last hereditary serfdom had been abolished in England, and six years after the commons of France had petitioned for the emancipation of every serf in any fief, a Dutch man-of-war entered James River, bringing in twenty negroes for sale. The necessity for labourers seems to have been the first cause of the introduction of negro slaves into Virginia, and the Dutch were for many years the principal slave traders. The cultivation of silk and of the vine had been introduced, but scarcity of labourers caused these branches of cultivation to languish; cotton, on the other hand, soon engaged attention. In 1621, the first seeds were sown as an experiment, and their “plentiful coming up” promised the most successful results.
Wyatt found the colony in a high degree of prosperity. The English had extended their plantations considerably inland, along the banks of the James River and the Potomac; wherever rich ground invited, there they established themselves, no longer fearing the solitude of the forest, because they no longer dreaded the power of the Indians. The Indians were regarded with contempt or pity; a single mastiff would put many to flight; seven hundred armed savages had on one occasion been routed by fifteen armed men; no care was taken to conciliate their good will, although in many cases their condition was improved by the introduction of some of the arts of civilised life. Their simple, child-like state may be exhibited by one small circumstance. A house had been built for the great chief Opechancanough, successor of Powhatan, according to the English style, and so delighted was he with the lock on the door, that he locked and unlocked it a hundred times a day, and regarded it as a triumph of skill.
So peaceful were all things, and so amicable appeared the relationship with the natives, on the arrival of Wyatt, that the emigrants needed fire-arms apparently merely for the destruction of game; and the old law of the colony which had made it death to teach an Indian the use of fire-arms, was now so much disregarded, that the Indians were employed by the whites as their huntsmen. Enmity, however, was not extinct in the heart of the savage. Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas, the firm friend of the English, was dead, and his younger brother, his successor, entertained different sentiments towards the strangers, whose rapidly increasing numbers and widely extending settlements might justly awake the fear and the jealousy of the primeval possessors of the soil. A deep plan of extermination was laid. In open battle the Indian knew that he had no chance, but by cunning and guile he could accomplish much. A general attack was determined on by the Indians, but all preparations concealed by impenetrable secrecy. The Indians appeared as amicably disposed as heretofore. They visited the settlements of the English, borrowed their boats, sat at their tables, and made professions of friendship; “sooner,” said they, “shall the sky fall than our friendship be broken by us!” and this on the very morning of the day which was to destroy the whole race.
At mid-day on the 22nd of March, at one and the same moment, the Indians fell upon the whole white population scattered in distant villages, one hundred and forty miles along each side of the river! No suspicion of such an intention had been excited;—men, women, and children, the missionary who had taught them and laboured among them with unwearying kindness; those from whom the Indian never received anything but benefits, all were murdered, with every appalling circumstance of Indian barbarity, and so great was their fury, that they even attacked the dead, as if to murder them anew.
In one hour three hundred and forty-seven persons were destroyed. And the whole of Virginia might have slept in one bloody grave, had not a converted Indian, the night before the massacre, revealed the plot to an Englishman, to whom he was much attached, and whose life he wished to save. By this means Jamestown and the nearer settlements were fully prepared. The larger portion of the colony was saved, but so universal was the terror which this bloody massacre occasioned, that all public works were interrupted, and the more remote settlements abandoned. The cultivation of the land was almost at once given up, and of the eighty flourishing, happy settlements which had so lately existed, now there remained but eight. Some of the colonists fled in their terror to England, and sickness broke out amongst those who remained.
The colonists rose up for vengeance, and in England so great was the sympathy and compassion excited, that new supplies and arms were immediately sent out; King James, for his part, ordering a quantity of arms which had been thrown into the Tower as good for nothing to be sent over, as they might be useful against the Indians! The city of London and many private persons generously contributed aid; and the brave John Smith, then in London, volunteered his services to defend the colonists and chastise the Indians; but the company declared it had no funds, and he was not rich enough to go out at his own cost.