Give Me Liberty: The Struggle for Self-Government in Virginia

by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker

In his anger at not being able to control the Burgesses, Spotswood tried to make the House less democratic by restricting the right to vote. But not daring to reveal his intention, he approached the question in a roundabout way. In September, 1715, he sent out a printed letter to all of the county courts, questioning whether the justices should levy a tax to pay the Burgesses' salaries when no law existed empowering them to do so.[13] To the Lords of Trade he explained that if the justices declined to pay the levy, "the Burgesses must have become suitors for an act wherein might properly have been described the qualifications of the electors and elected."[14] In other words, he was prepared to veto any bill to legalize the collecting of salaries that did not disfranchise the small landholder and restrict the right to sit in the House to the well-to-do. So he kept mum on the fact that the salaries could be assessed by the sheriffs on a writ, as was the practice in England.

But in this matter he was balked by the members of the Council. Carter, Blair, Ludwell, and the others no doubt guessed what Spotswood was aiming at, and they were unwilling to have him undermine the very foundations of liberty in Virginia. So in the General Court they passed "an unpreceded sentence" to levy the Burgesses' salary on the private estates of the justices if they refused "to levy it on their counties."[15]

The House asserted in no uncertain terms its right to judge of the election and qualifications of its members. When they heard that William Cole and Cole Digges, of Warwick County, had promised the voters that if elected they would serve without salary, they refused to seat them. A new election was held in which, presumably, no such promise was made, and Cole and Digges were again elected, and this time permitted to take their seats.[16] Spotswood taunted the House for not grasping at this opportunity to reduce the heavy burden of the poll tax, and the Council thought there was neither law nor practice to justify their action.[17] Yet the Burgesses were right, not only in regarding Cole and Digges' offer as bribery, but in claiming that it was contrary to a law passed in October, 1705.[18]

The House now made a major assault upon the powers of the Governor. The time had come, they thought, to put an end to the bribing of its members with lucrative jobs, which had been done with such pernicious consequences by Berkeley, Nicholson, and others. They passed an act making it unlawful for any Burgess to be also a naval officer, tobacco agent, clerk of a county court, or hold any other office of profit in the government. They next tried to put an end to long Assemblies by prohibiting their continuance for more than three years. A third measure "for ascertaining secretaries', sheriffs', clerks' and constables' fees" was designed to make the bait of office less attractive. These bills aroused Spotswood's ire, for he saw immediately that they were designed to strike the vital power of patronage from his hands and the hands of his successors. So he vetoed all three.

The Governor's main purpose in calling the Assembly of 1715 was to have them vote assistance to South Carolina in that colony's bloody struggle with a powerful confederation of Indians. "We must appear to have neither policy nor bowels of compassion, if this government can remain unconcerned while savage pagans are overwhelming one of our adjacent provinces, and inhumanly butchering and torturing our brethren," he told the Burgesses in his opening address.[19] To them South Carolina seemed a long way off. They had troubles enough at home without sending men and money there, but, since the Governor was so set on it, they would yield if he would consent to something they wanted.

They passed a bill to raise £450 for the purchase of supplies for South Carolina, but tacked on a rider for the repeal of the hated tobacco act. This, of course, Spotswood vetoed. To let it pass, he thought, would be an act of high injustice, since upon the faith of the tobacco law at least £7,000 had been spent in erecting warehouses and wharves, and in the purchase of scales.[20] Neither he nor the Burgesses realized that the law was under attack in England. The merchants were dissatisfied with it, and Solicitor General William Thompson held that it was an act in restraint of trade. In July, 1717, the act was vetoed by King George I.[21]

Spotswood closed the session with an ill-natured and bitter denunciation of the Burgesses. "The true interest of your country is not what you have troubled your heads about," he said. "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, your Prince, and all judicious men or before any others to whom you think you owe not your elections.... In fine, I cannot but attribute those miscarriages to the people's mistaken choice of a set of representatives whom Heaven has not generally endowed with the ordinary qualifications requisite to legislators, for I observe that the grand ruling party in your House has not furnished chairmen for two of your standing committees who can spell English or write common sense. And to keep such an Assembly on foot would be discrediting a country that has many able and worthy gentlemen in it. And therefore I dissolve you."[22]

Having insulted the Burgesses and the people who had elected them, Spotswood next incurred the enmity of a majority of the Council. The trouble started when he laid before them the instruction requiring him to see that fair books of accounts be kept of the Crown revenues.[23] Since only the gross sums had been reported and itemized accounts kept only on "loose papers," he demanded that the Auditor and the Receiver General adopt more businesslike methods. To this Receiver General William Byrd and Auditor Ludwell replied that they kept their accounts as their predecessors had kept them and in accordance with instructions from the Auditor General for all the colonies.

Soon after this Byrd left for England, taking with him, if we may believe Spotswood, "all the books of the revenue." The Governor then demanded of Ludwell whether or not he intended to comply with the instruction to keep account books. Ludwell replied that he could not change the old method without orders from the Auditor General. Since this was nothing less than setting up the authority of this officer against that of the King, the Governor thought the excuse a very poor one. So, in January, 1716, he ousted both Ludwell and Byrd from office.[24]

No doubt there had been confusion in the accounts, and no doubt Spotswood's insistence on having account books would have done much to bring them into order. It is possible, also, that there had been much remissness in paying taxes and some fraud. The Governor wrote the Lords of Trade: "Notwithstanding all the contrivances of the family to justify the late officers of the revenue, here is now demonstration, not only of darkness and confusion in the manner of collecting the quit rents, but likewise of frauds and errors in accounting for the King's revenue."[25]