timid policy of King James I. (1603-1625) in throwing out of employment the gallant seamen who had served under Elizabeth left them no option but to engage in the quarrels of strangers or seek employment, wealth and fame in the new world. The vague uncertain title of the first discoverer could now be backed up by actual settlement. That possession which was then as much as even ten points of law could be brought into play. A true colonial scheme could be developed and practised which' would not only reduce the wilderness to an inchoate government, but anchor it safely at the foot of the throne.

Now see the hold this spirit of colonization had gotten in England. The influential assigns of Raleigh's patent, the wealthy Gorges, governor of Plymouth (Eng.), the experienced Gosnold who first set English foot on Cape Cod (1602), the enthusiastic Captain Smith, the persevering Hakluyt, historian of all the early voyages, and towering above all, the Lord Chief Justice himself, Sir John Popham-these formed a coterie whose plea "to deduce a colony into Virginia" James I. could not resist. He granted them the first colonial charter under which the English were planted in America, April 10, 1606. Do not forget the date: it is an important one, the beginning of many real things in connection with our government. Do not forget the coterie. They were tenacious men, representative of England's wealth and influence at home and her adventure abroad, and they or their assigns come up continually from this time on to disturb future titles and worry future colonists. Do not fail either to look a little into the charter itself, for its bearings on our history and institutions are direct, and it shows in what shape English monarchy first fastened itself on our soil.

The charter gave twelve degrees, reaching from Cape Fear, N. C., to Halifax, Nova Scotia (34° to 45° N. lat.), to two rival companies, one of London, the other of towns in the west of England.* The London Company (Southern Colony), which

*The first goes, popularly, by the name of the London Company. As its portion of the above grant was the southern part of Virginia and its settlement on the James river, it is known to our history as the Southern Colony. The second company, whose residents were mostly at Plymouth, is called, popularly, the, Western Company,

alone succeeded, had right to occupy from 34° to 38°; that is, from Cape Fear to the southern limit of Maryland. The Western or Plymouth Company (Northern Colony) had right to occupy from 41° to 45°; that is, from say New York to Halifax. From 38° to 41° was open to both, with right to the soil fifty miles north or south of any actual settlement they might make therein.* The government was a Council in England appointed by the king. A Local Council had charge of local affairs in the respective colonies. The king reserved the right of supreme legislative authority and supervision. The emigrant and his children should continue to be Englishmen. The original grantees or patentees were to hold the lands and other rights by the tenure of free and common socage, and not in capite.† patentees could of course regrant their onists according to the tenures they held. able features of the charter were that the tive franchise, no right of self-government. The power was first

The lands to actual colThe hard, impracticemigrant had no elec

or the Plymouth Company, and as their part of the grant was in the north of Virginia, i. e., from New York to Halifax, it is known in our history as the Northern Colony, but chiefly by its failures.

*"The name of Virginia' was generally confined to the Southern Colony, and the name of Plymouth Company' was assumed by the Northern Colony. From the former the States south of the Potomac may be said to have had their origin, and from the latter the States of New England."-Story on the Constitution.

†This is very important as marking a point of decided departure from the feudal tenures based on military service, or tenures in capite. However rapidly the process of undermining feudal institutions may have been going on, it must have been a very bitter pill for a sovereign like King James to give such a signal recognition of their decadence, for be it known his signature to this charter not only broke in on all precedent for military (capite) tenure to land in America, but established the most democratic tenure then known in England, tenure by "free and common socage." This tenure existed only in Kent (Eng.) under the title gavelkind, “given to all the males alike." Says Blackstone, "It is probable the socage (plow service) tenures were the relics of Saxon liberty, retained by such persons as had neither forfeited them to the king nor been obliged to exchange their tenure for the more honorable though more burdensome tenure of knight service. This is peculiarly remarkable in the tenure which prevails in Kent, called gavelkind, which is acknowledged to be a species of socage tenure, the preservation whereof inviolate from the innovations of the Norman conqueror is a fact universally known, and those who have thus preserved their liberties are said to hold in free and common socage."

in a trading company composed of a select few, of which the actual settler was not one; then in a Local Council, in which he had no voice; then in a Supreme Council at home, which could never know him and could never have sympathy with his rights; lastly in the king himself, who not only created and dismissed the Supreme Council at pleasure, but held the power of making or revising their legislation. It was a truly wonderful scheme, and one, in most respects, well calculated to tickle the vanity of a weak prince. What wonder that, under it, the Local Council got to be a pure aristocracy entirely independent of the settlers, the people! What wonder that no element of popular liberty found its way into the government of the colony when its code of laws was completed and received kingly sanction! And what wonder the parliament of England speedily raised the question-a question which would not down until the American revolution-of how far the king was a usurper of their powers in assuming legislative authority abroad! Even the religion of the colonist was, under this memorable instrument, to be that of the Church of England.

One may well say all this was a long way off from what kings were afterwards taught to grant, and from that spirit of free thought and action which now pervades our institutions. Under such a charter and code permanent colonization at a distance from home, and in a spot where everything invited to freedom, was impossible. Every effort to plant under it, or to make it work for the good of emigrants, showed its imperfections in glaring colors. The weeding and paring process began early.

ENGLAND'S PERMANENT FOOTHOLD.-Under this charter the London Company founded Jamestown, Va., May. 1607; one hundred and nine years after Cabot's discovery of the Continent, and forty-one after Spain had settled Florida. As the Puritan, destined for the Hudson, was blown upon Cape Cod, so the three ships with the Virginia Colony were blown past Raleigh's old settlement at Roanoke, and into the waters of the Chesapeake. One year would have settled the fate of Jamestown, but for Captain Smith, who had fought for freedom in Holland, roamed France for pleasure, visited Egypt for study,

plunged into Mohammedan warfare for glory, escaped from Constantinople to Russia for safety, and now entered as hero on a drama the most exciting and thrilling of all. Even his ingenuity in handling hostile natives, and his unbending will, stronger than that of cowardly governor (Wingfield and Ratcliffe) or famished, rebellious emigrant, could not have saved the colony, but for an amendment to the charter government which robbed the king of the supreme legislative powers he had reserved and turned them over to the company and its governors. This gave to Smith's genius a fuller rein. 'He made the gentlemen colonists work, saying, "He who would not work might not eat." He entreated the company to send "more suitable persons for Virginia." "I entreat you," he writes, " rather send but thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons and diggers up of trees' roots, well provided, than a thousand of such as we have." Hopeless as his task seemed he held his control of the unruly colonists till disabled by an accidental explosion of gunpowder he was forced to go to England for treatment, without reward of any kind but the applause of conscience and the world. He was the true father of Virginia, and, vastly more, the pioneer who secured to the Saxon race its first permanent foothold within the borders of the United States. Virginia was a fact, but as yet a limitless fact. And this it proved, and continued to prove, that just as the king was shorn of his charter powers, and just as the Home Council and the governors were deprived of their arbitrary control, and the same passed over to and began to be exercised by the people under the forms of law, in that proportion the colony throve. America was no place for restricted individual rights nor absolute foreign authority.

TOBACCO, COTTON AND SLAVES.-The Jamestown colonist got to be an industrious man. It was a clear question of the "survival of the fittest." He grew tobacco and the cereals, and found both profitable. The former became a staple and a currency. He was not satisfied with his farm title. It was amended so as to make him secure. He clamored for representation. This too he got. The first colonial assembly met at Jamestown,

June, 1619. This was the dawn of legislative liberty in America. They who had been dependent on the fickle will of a governor demanded a code of laws based on those of England. Such a code came over in 1621. It was a form of government away

outside of the harsh and narrow provisions of the charter. Under it the colony got a parliament, very like that of England. Thenceforth Virginia was the Virginia of the colonists. It was their country, and their country reached from North Carolina to Halifax, and as far west as imagination chose to go. The king was still king, and of a new empire, but of a people who had gradually acquired rights they would never voluntarily part with. He had a rival though. In 1621 the first cotton-seed was planted with success. The infant thus cradled grew into "King Cotton." Strange to say, only one year before, August, 1620, fourteen months after the first Virginia Assembly, four months before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth rock, more than a hundred years after slavery had disappeared from England, six years after the abolition of serfdom in France, a Dutch man-of-war entered the James river and landed twenty negroes for sale. Unfortunately the constitution and code of laws which were received by the colony the next year had been prepared without knowledge of this event, or they might have contained some clause prohibiting this kind of commerce. As it was, the commerce grew and the slave system got hold, in spite of a strong sentiment among the better class of colonists against it, and in spite of a few feeble colonial laws passed with a design to discourage it. By one of those strange contradictions in human affairs, the colony which had in fourteen years converted a despotic charter into a representative form of government, and had actually become an asylum of liberty,* became also the abode of hereditary bondsmen.t

*The Virginia Colony had not as yet paid much attention to its religious code, and even the heady Puritan could find an asylum there. His presence was not interdicted till the democratic revolution in England under Cromwell gave political importance to religious sects. Then to tolerate a Puritan was to favor a member of a republican party.

Negro slavery was certainly an offence against the better instincts of all the colonies. Though all the earlier ones tolerated it, there was no lack of discourag