and forgotten date – the Virginia Company, acting within the powers conferred on it by its charter, granted to the residents in Virginia a document styled a "Great Charter or Commissions of Priviledges, Orders, and Lawes." No copy of this instrument now exists, but some of its provisions have been preserved. It established a legislative body, to consist of councilors of estate and of representatives or burgesses chosen by the several "plantations" or hundreds, and it limited the power of the governor. This charter was the starting point of constitutional government in the New World. It contained in embryo the American system of an executive power lodged mainly in one person, and a Legislature of two houses. One might without much exaggeration call this paper a sort of Magna Charta of America, and it was a long and probably a deliberate step toward popular government. 22 If the results that have followed it be considered, it can hardly be accounted second in importance to any other state paper of the seventeenth century.
XVI
Division of land. Not only did this admirable charter establish a representative form of government and do away with martial law, but it fairly launched the Virginians on the current of freedom and advancement by authorizing a liberal division of land to all those who had arrived before the departure of Sir Thomas Dale. 23 The oldest land titles in Virginia are deduced from the authority of the Great Charter of 1618. Aspinwall Papers, p. 14, note. Communism, pernicious everywhere, is at its worst in an infant settlement. True Declaration, p. 25. "Every man sharked for his own bootie," says a writer on Virginia in 1609, "but was altogether careless of the succeeding penurie." The distribution of land abolished the common stock system of labor, and opened a pathway to the ambition of the diligent.
The good news in Virginia. Tidings of the great change wrought in their condition and prospects by the new charter reached the dwellers on the James River in the spring of 1619, and the colonists were "ravished with so much joy" that they felt themselves "now fully satisfied for their long labors and as happy men as there were in the world." Note 17. They valued their liberties as no man can who has not known the bitterness of bondage, and in 1623, when they had reason to fear the re-establishment of the old tyranny, the Virginia Assembly petitioned the king in these strong words: "Rather than be reduced to live under the like government, we desire his Majesty that commissioners may be sent over to hang us." Tragicall Relation, 1623. We have here, perhaps, the very first of the many protests of colonial Legislatures against oppression from England.
XVII
The sending of wives to Virginia. In 1618, before the adoption of the charter, it was concluded, in the quaint phrase of the time, "that a plantation can never flourish till families be planted and the respects of Wives and Children fix the people on the soyle," or, in simpler words, that a colony of bachelors can hardly found a state. 24 The first ship laden with home-makers carried over ninety maids, and the company thought it necessary to promise special rewards to the men who should marry these young women. If the maids were as certified, "young, handsome, and well recommended," they needed no such dowry in a land that had hardly a woman in it. Young or old, handsome or homely, the maids did not prove a drug. Shipload after shipload of them were eagerly bought by the planters, who had to pay a round sum in the high-priced tobacco of that early time to defray the cost of transporting these wives. Besides having to pay for his wife, the planter could have her only on the condition of winning her consent; and the eager courtship that ensued on the arrival of a shipload of maids must have been one of the most amusing scenes in the settlement of America. Suitors far outnumbered the women, and the latter had things pretty much their own way. The first cargo of this interesting merchandise was landed in 1619, but as late as 1624 the women were probably in danger of setting the colonists by the ears, for the governor felt obliged to issue a proclamation threatening fine or whipping for the offense of betrothal to more than one person at a time. 25 In 1632, thirteen years after the first shipment, we find the colony still being replenished with women sent in the same fashion. In that year, two, whose behavior during the voyage had been disgraceful, were sent back as unfit to be mothers of Virginians. The precaution could not have been of much practical use, but it indicates the early growth of a wholesome local pride. When there were house mothers in the cabins, and children born in the country, the settlers no longer dreamed of returning to England; and there was soon a young generation that knew no other skies than those that spanned the rivers, fields, and vast primeval forests of their native Virginia, which now for the first time became a home.
XVIII
The struggle ended, 1624. It is not the Virginia colony alone that we have seen in the crucible. The fate of English colonization was no doubt settled by the experiments made during the first years on the James River, and the story told in this chapter is but the overture to the whole history of life in the United States. In our colonizing age a settlement might be made in the heart of Africa with a far smaller loss of life than was incurred in the first sixteen years in Virginia. From 1607 to 1623 there were landed in Virginia more than six thousand people. The number that returned to England was inconsiderable, but in the year 1624, when the colony passed under a royal government, there remained alive in the colony only twelve hundred and seventy-five. Of those who came in these early years four fifths perished. A part of this loss was due to radically wrong conceptions of the nature, end, and proper methods of colonization, a part to corrupt and incompetent management in the London Company. The bad character of many of the earliest emigrants was one cause of difficulty. The writers of the time probably exaggerated this evil in order to excuse the severity of the government and the miseries into which the settlers fell. But the loss of many of the early comers must be accounted a distinct gain to Virginia. Unfitted for their environment, they were doomed to extinction by that pitiless law which works ever to abolish from the earth the improvident, the idle, and the vicious.
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
THE PROCESSION OF MOTIVES
I
The chief mistake. The cause of the sorrows of Virginia will be more plainly seen if we turn again to the motives that propelled Englishmen to plant a colony. The chief mistake lay in the main purpose. If the founding of a state had been other than a secondary and remote end, the managers might have sent at first families and not bachelors, farmers and not gentlemen, laborers and not riff-raff. But more visionary motives dominated the action. A state was planted, but something else was mainly intended by the first projectors. The work seemed continuous, but the end in view shifted and the actors gradually changed. The only motive that held from first to last, and ran through all the rest, was the rivalry with Spain.
The rivalry with Spain. The colonies attempted by Frobisher and Gilbert were to serve as relays in the work of exploration for a sea passage to the Pacific and the search for mines, but they mark strongly the influence of the Spanish example on English projects. Ralegh was a lifelong opponent in peace and war of Spanish intrigue and aggression, and his efforts to plant colonies in the virgin land were suggested by a knowledge of the almost exhaustless treasure that flowed into Spanish coffers from America. The opportune capture of a Spanish carack bound homeward from Mexico with letters describing the wealth of Mexican mines brought the support of English merchants to Ralegh's undertaking. Imbued with the same spirit, Ralegh's governor wrote from Roanoke Island in 1585 that his colony would be a means of deliverance from the domination of Spain, "whose strength doth altogether grow from the mines of her treasure." Lane to Sydney. Aug. 12, 1585. Sainsbury. In the perilous isolation of the little company on Roanoke Island, Lane assures himself that God will feed his men by means of ravens rather than suffer their "enemies the papists" "to triumph at the overthrow of this most Christian action." Lane to Walsingham. Aug. 12, 1585. Sainsbury. The home-staying English of that age were spurred to colony-planting by three main motives – cupidity, patriotic feeling, and religious zeal – and all of these were provoked by emulation and jealousy of Spain. 26
II
Delusions in colony-planting. The prolonged movement for a colonial establishment, which extended over the latter half of the reign of Elizabeth