Lord Delaware was succeeded (1611) by Sir Thomas Dale, a stern disciplinarian, but a man of sound sense. He allotted three acres of land to each colonist, on condition that he should deliver a certain quantity of corn annually to the keeper of the common storehouse. This arrangement had a most happy effect: it secured to each man a little estate of his own, stimulated industry, and provided a reserve supply of food for the colony.

A year later (1612) the King granted to the Company a third and final charter. It differed from the preceding ones in putting the management of the colony into the hands not of a council, but of the body of stockholders in England.

42. John Rolfe begins the cultivation of tobacco; results. Not long after Governor Dale's administration began, John Rolfe, who married Pocahontas, planted a field with tobacco (1612) which he sold at a handsome profit in England. That experiment decided the industrial and commercial success of the colony. Henceforth every man that could turn planter did so, and began raising tobacco for the English market. The soil and climate of Virginia favored the new culture, and the navigable streams emptying into Chesapeake Bay made it easy for the planters to ship their crop almost from their own doors direct to London.

Notwithstanding a heavy tax imposed on this product by the King, the demand for it constantly increased. In 1619 the Virginians exported 20,000 pounds of tobacco, and eight years later 500,000. Long before the close of the century the quantity sent abroad had risen (1670) to nearly 12,000,000 pounds. Charles II. thought that the use of the weed would be of short duration, and declared that the prosperity of Virginia was "wholly built upon smoke "; but from that "smoke" England derived, and still derives, a goodly part of her revenue.

In Virginia tobacco became (1620) the legal currency, and planters paid their tavern bills and their taxes in rolls or hogsheads of it. Later the Legislature enacted laws stinting the quantity of the plant which a farmer might raise, and compel

ling him to devote a certain number of acres to corn. These laws were necessary to prevent over-production in the one case, and to provide food in the other.

Economically, politically and socially the cultivation of tobacco had results of the highest importance.

1. It encouraged the immigration of a class of thrifty and industrious colonists who saw in Virginia a gold mine which they could work with a hoe.

2. It induced the exportation from England of thousands of "indented apprentices," who were bound to the planters for a number of years. Part of them came voluntarily, part were kidnapped in English ports and shipped to Virginia against their will. In a few instances, convicts known as "jail birds were sent over by order of the King. By a later Act of Parliament convicts might be sent to any of the American colonies, though the greater part seem to have been transported to the West Indies.55 Most of these apprentices and their descendants became what were known as "Poor Whites," or "Scrubs." Occasionally a remarkable man sprang from these people. In modern times "Stonewall" Jackson was one, and Abraham Lincoln says that he was another.56

3. The demand for cheap and permanent laborers for raising tobacco led directly to the introduction (1619) of negro slavery.

4. The plantations, by scattering the population over large areas, checked the growth of towns and of public schools; but they were highly favorable to the creation of a well-to-do and high-spirited rural aristocracy who lived on their estates much after the fashion of the county aristocracy of England.

5. Finally, although tobacco exhausted the soil, and in time. compelled the planters to abandon their old farms and take new, yet this staple first placed Virginia on a solid financial basis, and ensured the success of the colony.

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43. Establishment of the Virginia Assembly; Virginia loses her charter; suffrage; power of the Assembly (1619); local government. A majority of the Virginia Company in

England were members of the Liberal party of that day. In their sympathy for popular liberty they resolved to give the colonists the power to enact laws so "that they might have a hand in governing themselves.” 58

Acting under orders from the Company, Governor Yeardley called on the inhabitants of the eleven boroughs or towns of Virginia to elect two representatives from each borough to meet with him and his council. In accordance with that summons the first American legislature assembled in the church at Jamestown in the summer of 1619. That body had full power to make all needful "general laws," 59 but no law was to be in force unless approved by the Governor and "solemnly ratified" by the Virginia Company in England. The meeting of that House of Burgesses or Assembly marks the beginning of local self-government on the American continent.

At first all free men had the right to vote for members of the Assembly, but later (1670) it was enacted that in accordance with English law and custom none but householders and owners of real estate should have "a voice in the election of any burgesses in this country."

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In 1621 the Company gave the colonists a written constitution 61 confirming their right to a legislative Assembly. A little later the burgesses enacted (1623) that the Governor should not "lay any taxes. . . upon the colony . . . other than by the authority of the General Assembly." 62 This enactment had the effect of making the Assembly the real ruling

power.

The stockholders of the Virginia Company fell into disputes, and the King took advantage of the fact to annul the charter (1624) and make the colony a royal province; but this change did not affect the Assembly. The local government of the province was carried on by parish committees, who taxed the people for the support of the Episcopal Church and for the poor. The counties were governed by officers appointed by the royal Governor. These officers levied taxes to build highways

and for other purposes. The general expenses of the province were met by taxes levied by the Assembly.

In time local government throughout the South came to resemble that of Virginia, especially in the county system. 44. The beginning of African slavery in Virginia (1619). - Not long after the meeting of the first American legislature an event occurred which John Rolfe, the tobacco planter, thus records: "About the last of August (1619) came in a Dutch man-of-war that sold us twenty Negars." The purchase of that score of kidnapped Africans fastened slavery on Virginia and on the United States. No one then thought it any more harm to buy a negro than to buy a horse. The laws of Moses were believed to sanction traffic in human beings, and the AttorneyGeneral of England declared that "negroes being pagans might justly be bought and sold." The English sovereigns shared in the profits of the trade and encouraged the Virginians to buy as many black men as they could pay for. Before the American Revolution, every one of the thirteen colonies held more or less slaves. But the increase of negroes in Virginia was slow, since planters of small means found it cheaper to employ the labor of "indented apprentices." Later a statute (1662) made slavery hereditary, not only for negroes, but for mulattoes, by providing that "all children born in this country shall be held bond or free, according to the condition of the mother." 63

45. Attempts to check the importation of slaves; growth of slavery. Eventually the Virginians became alarmed at the rapid increase of slaves and endeavored to check their importation, but the English Parliament refused to allow any restriction on so lucrative a trade. George Mason of Virginia declared in the Federal Congress that "this infernal traffic originated in the avarice of British merchants," and Jefferson, in his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, made the King's encouragement of the slave-trade one of the reasons which justified the colonies in separating from the mother-country.

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But although Jefferson, Washington, and other leading Virginians (who were themselves slave-holders), advocated gradual emancipation, yet the majority of the planters opposed it. After the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and after the invention of the cotton-gin made the cultivation of cotton enormously profitable, slavery gained a commercial and political importance which made it for more than two generations the "central problem of American history."

46. Importation of women; results; Plymouth Colony; the situation. But though Virginia was becoming prosperous, the colony still lacked one element without which no colony could hope to thrive. Very few women had emigrated to Jamestown. The Virginia Company resolved to remedy the deficiency and sent (1621) ninety "young and handsome maids to be disposed in marriage to the most honest and industrious planters . . . who are to defray the charge of their passage." The charge was from 120 to 150 pounds of the best leaf tobacco. Never was that plant put to better use.

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When the women came, homes began in this part of the New World. Husband, wife, children, — these threefold bonds made the little Virginian commonwealth sure of its future.

Five hundred miles to the northeast a band of Pilgrims had recently (1620) planted a second English colony. They brought their families with them, they too had homes. The children born in these two settlements, at Plymouth Rock and on the James River, would call this country, and not England, their native land; in that way America would come to be a sacred name, and mean what it had never meant before.

Here then was the situation in 1621: In Florida a few hundred Spaniards held a fort (St. Augustine) on the coast; at Quebec a small number of French Catholics, who had gone there in 1608, held another fort; on the Hudson River a thrifty colony of Dutch traders had established themselves since 1614.

In New England and Virginia there were two little settlements of English people. Of these four rival colonies the