These arguments are answered in order, thus:
1. The fact of the "tumultuous assemblage," &c. might have existed without such fact appearing in the records spoken of. For these records are manifestly incomplete. Some whole documents are lost, and parts of many. Granting that Berkeley was elected precisely in the usual way, it does not disprove that a multitude urged him to resume his old office. The election is all of which these records would speak. But the call to office might have been a popular movement—the election quite as usual. This latter was left to go on in the old mode, probably because it was well known "that those who were to make it were cavaliers."
Moreover—Beverley, Burk, Chalmers and Holmes are all direct testimony in favor of the "tumultuous assemblage."
2. The act of surrender was in self-defence, when resistance would have availed nothing. Its terms evince no acknowledgment of authority, but mere submission to force. They contain not one word recognizing the rightful power of Parliament, nor impeaching that of the king.
3. The "claiming the supreme power," &c. proves any thing but the fealty of the Colonial Legislature to the Commonwealth. According to Mr. Bancroft himself, Virginians in 1619 "first set the world the example of equal representation." "From that time" (we here quote the words of Judge Tucker,) "they held that the supreme power was in the hands of the Colonial Parliament, then established, and of the king as king of Virginia. Now the authority of the king being at an end, and no successor being acknowledged, it followed, as a corollary from their principles, that no power remained but that of the assembly,"—and this is precisely what they mean by claiming the supreme power as residing in the Colonial Legislature.
4. Chalmers, Beverley, Holmes, Marshall and Robertson speak, positively, of great discontents occasioned by restrictions and oppressions upon Virginian commerce: and a Memorial in behalf of the trade of the State presented to the Protector, mentions "the poor planters' general complaints that they are the merchant's slaves," as a consequence of "that Act of Navigation."
5. It is probable that Bennett, Digges, and Matthews, (granting Bennett to have been disloyal) were forced upon the colony by Cromwell, whom Robertson (on the authority of Beverley and Chalmers,) asserts to have named the governors during the Protectorate. The election was possibly a mere form. The use of the equivocal word named, is, as Judge Tucker remarks, a proof that the historian was not speaking at random. He does not say appointed. They were named—with no possibility of their nomination being rejected—as the speaker of the House of Commons was frequently named in England. But Bennett was a staunch loyalist—a fact too well known in Virginia to need proof.
6. The reasoning here is reasoning in a circle. Virginia is first declared republican. From this assumed fact, deductions are made which prove Berkeley so—and Berkeley's republicanism, thus proved, is made to establish that of Virginia. But Berkeley's answer (from which Mr. Bancroft has extracted the words "I am but the servant of the Assembly") runs thus.
"You desire me to do that concerning your titles and claims to land in this northern part of America, which I am in no capacity to do; for I am but the servant of the Assembly: neither do they arrogate to themselves any power farther than the miserable distractions in England force them to. For when God shall be pleased to take away and dissipate the unnatural divisions of their native country, they will immediately return to their professed obedience." Smith's New York. It will be seen that Mr. Bancroft has been disingenuous in quoting only a portion of this sentence. The whole proves incontestibly that neither Berkeley nor the Assembly arrogated to themselves any power beyond what they were forced to assume by circumstances—in a word, it proves their loyalty. But Berkeley was loyal beyond dispute. Norwood, in his "Journal of a Voyage to Virginia," states that "Berkeley showed great respect to all the royal party who made that colony their refuge. His house and purse were open to all so qualified." The same journalist was "sent over, at Berkeley's expense, to find out the King in Holland, and have an interview with him."
To these arguments in favor of Virginia's loyalty may be added the following.