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foreigners" to trade with them, on payment of no higher duty than that which was levied on such English vessels as were bound for a foreign port. Proposals of peace and commerce between New Netherland and Virginia were discussed without scruple by the respective colonial governments, and, in 1660, a statute of Virginia extended to every Christian nation, in amity with England, a promise of liberty to trade and equal justice. At the restoration, Virginia enjoyed freedom of commerce.

Virginia was the first state in the world, with separate districts or boroughs, diffused over an extensive surface, where representation was organized on the principle of a suffrage embracing all payers of a tax. In 1655, an attempt was made to limit the right to housekeepers; but the very next year it was decided to be "hard, and unagreeable to reason, that any person shall pay equal taxes, and yet have no votes in elections;" and the electoral franchise was restored to all freemen. Servants, when the time of their bondage was completed, became electors, and might be chosen burgesses.

Religious liberty advanced under the influence of independent domestic legislation. No churches had been erected except in the heart of the colony; and there were so few ministers that a bounty was offered for their importation. In the reign of Charles, conformity had been enforced by measures of disfranchisement and exile; in 1658, under the commonwealth, all things respecting parishes and parishioners were referred to their own ordering; and religious liberty would have been perfect but for an act of intolerance, by which Quakers were banished, and their return proscribed as a felony.

Thus Virginia established the supremacy of the popular branch, freedom of trade, the independence of religious societies, security from foreign taxation, and the elective franchise for every one who paid so much as a poll-tax. Proud of her own sons, she already preferred them for places of authority. Emigrants never again desired to live in England. Prosperity advanced with freedom; dreams of new staples and infinite wealth were indulged; and the population, at the epoch of the restoration, may have been about

thirty thousand. Many of the recent comers had been loyalists, good officers in the war, men of education, of property, and of condition. The revolution had not subdued their characters, but the waters of the Atlantic divided them from the strifes of Europe; their industry was employed in making the best advantage of their plantations; and the interests and liberties of the land which they adopted were dearer to them than the monarchical principles which they had espoused in England. Virginia had long been the home of its inhabitants. "Among many other blessings," said their statute-book, "God Almighty hath vouchsafed increase of children to this colony;" and the huts in the wilderness were as full as the birds' nests of the woods.

The clear atmosphere, especially of autumn, and the milder winter, delighted the comers from England. Many objects of nature were new and wonderful: the loud and frequent thunder-storms; forests, free from underwood, and replenished with sweet barks and odors; trees in the season clothed in flowers of brilliant colors; birds with gay plumage and varied melodies. Every traveller admired the mocking-bird, which repeated and excelled the notes of its rivals; and the humming-bird, so bright in its hues and so delicate in its form, quick in motion, rebounding from the blossom into which it dips its bill, and as soon returning to renew its many addresses. The rattlesnake, with the terrors of its alarum and the deadliness of its venom; the opossum, celebrated for the care of its offspring; the noisy frog, booming from the shallows like the English bittern; the flying squirrel; the myriads of pigeons, darkening the air with the immensity of their flocks, and breaking with their weight the boughs of trees on which they alighted—became the subjects of the strangest tales. The concurrent relation of Indians seemed to justify the belief that, within ten days' journey toward the setting of the sun, there was a country where gold might be washed from the sand.

Various were the employments by which the stillness of life was relieved. George Sandys, who for a time was in Virginia as treasurer for the colony, a poet, whose verse was tolerated by Dryden and praised by his friend Drayton and

by Izaak Walton, as well as by Richard Baxter, employed hours of night in translating ten books of Ovid's "Metamorphoses." The lover of the garden found the fruits of Europe improved in flavor by the joint influence of climate and soil. The chase furnished a perpetual resource. It was not long before the horse was multiplied; and to improve that noble animal was early an object of pride, soon to be favored by legislation.

The hospitality of the Virginians was proverbial. Land was cheap, and competence followed industry. There was no need of a scramble. The morasses were alive with waterfowl; the creeks abounded with oysters, heaped together in inexhaustible beds; the rivers were crowded with fish; the forests were alive with game; the woods rustled with coveys of quails and wild turkeys; and hogs, swarming like vermin, ran at large in troops. It was "the best poor man's country in the world." "If a happy peace be settled in poor England," it had been said, "then they in Virginia shall be as happy a people as any under Heaven."

VOL. 1.-12

CHAPTER X.

COLONIZATION OF MARYLAND.

VIRGINIA, by its second charter, extended two hundred miles north of Old Point Comfort, and therefore included the soil which forms the state of Maryland. It was not long before the country toward the head of the Chesapeake was explored; settlements in Accomack were extended; and commerce was begun with tribes which Smith had been the first to visit. In 1621, Pory, the secretary of the colony, "made a discovery into the great bay," as far as the river Patuxent, which he ascended; but his voyage probably reached no farther to the north. An English settlement of a hundred men, on the eastern shore, was a consequence of his voyage. The hope "of a very good trade of furs" with the Indians animated the adventurers.

An attempt to obtain a monopoly of this intercourse was made by William Clayborne, whose resolute spirit was destined to exert a long-continued influence. His first appearance in America was as a surveyor, sent by the London company to make a map of the country. At the fall of the corporation, he had been appointed by King James a member of the council; and, on the accession of Charles, was continued in office, and, in repeated commissions, was nominated secretary of state. He further received authority from the governors of Virginia to discover the source of the bay of the Chesapeake, and explore any part of the province, from the thirty-fourth to the forty-first degree of latitude. Upon his favorable representation, a company was formed in England for trading with the natives; and, in May, 1631, through the agency of Sir William Alexander, the Scottish proprietary of

Nova Scotia, a royal license was issued, sanctioning the commerce, and conferring on Clayborne powers of government over the companions of his voyages. Under this grant, the isle of Kent was occupied in the following August, and the right to the soil was soon after purchased of the Indians. An advanced post was established near the mouth of the Susquehanna. The settlers on Kent island were all members of the church of England; and in February, 1632, they were represented by a burgess in the grand assembly of Virginia. In March of that year, their license was confirmed by a commission from Sir John Harvey as governor of Virginia.

The United States were severally colonized by men, in origin, religious faith, and purposes, as various as their climes. Before Virginia could occupy the country north of the Potomac, a new government in that quarter was promised to Sir George Calvert. Born in Yorkshire, educated at Oxford, with a mind enlarged by extensive travel, on his entrance into life he was befriended by Sir Robert Cecil, advanced to the honors of knighthood, and at length employed as one of the two secretaries of state. In 1621, he stood with Wentworth to represent in parliament his native county, and escaped defeat, though not a resident in the shire. His capacity for business, his industry, and his fidelity to King James, are acknowledged by all historians. In the house of commons it was he who made an untimely speech for the supply of the king's purse; and, when the commons claimed their liberties as their ancient and undoubted right and inheritance, it was to Calvert the king unbosomed his anger at their use of such "anti-monarchical words." The negotiations for the marriage of the prince of Wales with a Spanish princess were conducted entirely by him. In an age of increasing divisions among Protestants, his mind sought relief from controversy in the bosom of the Roman Catholic church; and, professing his conversion without forfeiting the king's favor, in 1624, he disposed advantageously. of his place, which had been granted him for life, and obtained the title of Lord Baltimore in the Irish peerage.

He had, from early years, shared the enthusiasm of England in favor of American plantations; had been a member of the great company for Virginia; and, while secretary of state,

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