[32] From The Story of the Greatest Nations, by permission of F. R. Niglutsch.
FIRST AMERICAN LEGISLATURE
A.D. 1619
CHARLES CAMPBELL
As a distinctly American event the beginning of formal legislation in this country has special interest, no less for the general reader than for students of legal history. None of the early institutions of the fathers is more important than that which developed into the State legislature.
At the opening of 1609 the Virginia colony, which was not then in a flourishing condition, asked and obtained from King James I a new charter. The territory was now greatly enlarged, the powers of local government increased, and Virginia soon entered upon its permanent career.
In 1617 "a party of greedy and unprincipled adventurers" in England succeeded in having an agent of their own appointed deputy governor. This was Samuel Argall. Lord Delaware, the Governor, dying in 1618, Argall became virtual dictator, and under his arbitrary and self-seeking rule the people suffered. Meanwhile others, in England, were at work in the interest of the Virginia Company, under whose auspices, from the granting of the new charter, the colony had existed. Sir Edwin Sandys, in 1618, was made treasurer and actual governor of the Virginia Company. Through the efforts of Sandys and others in England, Sir George Yeardley, who had governed Virginia in 1616, was sent in 1619 to supersede Argall.
This year "was remarkable in the annals of the colony. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that it witnessed the creation of Virginia as an independent community." From that year Sandys and his followers maintained their ascendency, and a high degree of energy and statesmanlike wisdom marked the administration of the colonial government. The calling of the first assembly was one of the principal acts of Yeardley's administration.