ern Neck. A few victims on the gallows silenced discontent. The assembly was convened, and its little remaining control over the executive was wrested from it. The council was the general court; but, according to usage, appeals lay from it to the general assembly. The custom menaced Culpepper with defeat in his attempts to appropriate to himself the cultivated plantations of the Northern Neck. The artful magistrate, for a private and lucrative purpose, fomented a dispute between the council and the assembly. The burgesses, in their high court of appeal, claimed to sit alone, excluding the council from whose decision the appeal was made; and Culpepper, having referred the question to the king for decision, in the next year announced that no appeals whatever should be permitted to the assembly, nor any to the king in council under the value of one hundred pounds sterling. The holders of land who were debtors to Culpepper now lay at his mercy, and were compelled eventually to negotiate a compromise.

Weary of the irksome residence in a province wasted by perverse legislation, Culpepper returned to England. His patent as governor for life was rendered void by a process of law, but only to recover a prerogative for the crown. The council of Virginia reported the griefs and restlessness of the country, and renewed the request that the grant to Culpepper and Arlington might be recalled. The exhaustion of the province rendered negotiation more easy; the design agreed well with the new colonial policy of Charles II. Arlington surrendered his rights to Culpepper; and in July, 1684, Virginia became again a royal province.

Lord Howard of Effingham was Culpepper's successor. Like so many before and after him, he solicited office in America to get money, and resorted to the usual expedient of exorbitant fees. In England his avarice met with no severe reprobation.

The accession of James II., in 1685, made but few changes in the political condition of Virginia. The suppression of Monmouth's rebellion gave to it useful citizens. "Lord chief justice is making his campaign in the west :" so wrote the king, with his own hand, in allusion to Jeffries' circuit for punishing the insurgents; "he has condemned several hundreds,

some of whom are already executed, more are to be, and the others sent to the plantations." The courtiers round James II. clutched at the rich harvest which the rebellion promised. Jeffries heard of the scramble, and thus interposed: "I beseech your majesty that I may inform you that each prisoner will be worth ten pound, if not fifteen pound, apiece; and, sir, if your majesty orders these as you have already designed, persons that have not suffered in the service will run away with the booty." The convicts were in part persons of family and education, accustomed to elegance and ease. "Take all care," wrote the monarch, under the countersign of Sunderland, to the government in the colony, "take all care that they continue to serve for ten years at least, and that they be not permitted in any manner to redeem themselves, by money or otherwise, until that term be fully expired. Prepare a bill for the assembly of our colony, with such clauses as shall be requisite for this purpose." No Virginia legislature seconded such malice; and in December, 1689, the exiles were pardoned.

On another occasion, Jeffries exerted an opposite influence. Kidnapping had become common in Bristol; and not felons only, but young persons and others, were hurried across the Atlantic and sold for money. At Bristol, the mayor and justices would intimidate small rogues and pilferers, who, under the terror of being hanged, prayed for transportation as the only avenue to safety, and were then divided among the members of the court. The trade was exceedingly profitable-far more so than the slave-trade-and had been conducted for years. By accident it came to the knowledge of Jeffries, who delighted in a fair opportunity to rant. Finding that the aldermen, justices, and the mayor himself were concerned in this sort of man-stealing, he turned to the mayor, who was sitting on the bench, bravely arrayed in scarlet and furs, gave him every ill name which scolding eloquence could devise, and made him go down to the criminal's post at the bar, to plead for himself as a common rogue would have done. The prosecutions depended till the revolution, which made an amnesty ; and the judicial kidnappers, retaining their gains, suffered nothing beyond disgrace and terror.

Virginia ceased for a season to be the favorite resort of voluntary emigrants. The presence of a frigate sharpened the zeal of the royal officers in enforcing the acts of navigation. A new tax in England on the consumption of tobacco was injurious to the producer. Culpepper and his council had arraigned a printer for publishing the laws, and ordered him to print nothing till the king's pleasure should be known; and Effingham received the instruction to allow no printingpress on any pretense whatever. The rule was continued under James II. The methods of despotism are monotonous.

To perfect the system, Effingham established a chancery court, in which he himself was chancellor. The councillors might advise, but were without a vote. An arbitrary table of fees followed of course. This is the period when royal authority was at its height in Virginia. The executive, the council, the judges, the sheriffs, the county commissioners, and local magistrates, were all appointed directly or indirectly by the crown. Virginia had no town-meetings, no village democracies, no free municipal institutions, The custom of a colonial assembly remained, but it was chosen under a restricted franchise; its clerk was ordered to be appointed by the governor; and its power was impaired by the permanent grant of revenue which it could not recall. The indulgence of liberty of conscience and the enfranchisement of papists were suspected in King James as a device to restore dominion "to popery."

In 1685, the first assembly convened after the accession of James II. questioned a part of his negative power. Former laws had been repealed; the king negatived the repeal, and revived the earlier law. The assembly obstinately refused to acknowledge this exercise of prerogative, and brought upon themselves a censure of their "unnecessary debates and contests touching the negative voice," "the disaffected and unquiet disposition of the members, and their irregular and tumultuous proceedings." In 1686, they were dissolved by royal proclamation. James Collins, in 1687, was imprisoned and loaded with irons for treasonable expressions. The servile council pledged to the king their lives and fortunes, but the feeling of personal independence, nourished by the manners

VOL. I.-32

of rural life, could never be repressed. In the assembly of April, 1688, the spirit of the burgesses was greater than ever, and an immediate dissolution of the body seemed to the council the only mode of counteracting their influence. But the governor, in a new country, without soldiers and without a citadel, was compelled to practice moderation. Tyranny was impossible; for it had no powerful instruments. When the prerogative was at its height, it was still too feeble to subdue the colony. Virginia was always "A LAND OF LIBERTY."

Nor let the first tendencies to union pass unnoticed. In the bay of the Chesapeake, Smith had encountered warriors of the Five Nations; and others had fearlessly roamed to the shores of Massachusetts bay, and even invaded the soil of Maine. In 1667 the Mohawks committed ravages near Northampton, on Connecticut river; and the general court of Massachusetts addressed them a letter: "We never yet did any wrong to you, or any of yours," such was the language of the Puritan diplomatists, "neither will we take any from you, but will right our people according to justice." In 1677 Maryland invited Virginia to join with itself and with New York in a treaty of peace with the Seneca Indians, and in the month of August a conference was held with that tribe at Albany. In July, 1684, the governor of Virginia and of New York, and the agent of Massachusetts, met the sachems of the Five Nations at Albany, to strengthen and burnish the covenant-chain, and plant the tree of peace, of which the top should reach the sun, and the branches shelter the wide land. The treaty extended from the St. Croix to Albemarle. New York was the bond of New England and Virginia. The north and the south were united by the acquisition of NEW NETHERLAND.

CHAPTER XII.

NEW NETHERLAND.

THE spirit of the age was present when the foundations of New York were laid. Every great European event affected the fortunes of America. Did a state prosper, it sought an increase of wealth by plantations in the west. Was a sect persecuted, it escaped to the New World. The Reformation, followed by collisions between English dissenters and the Anglican hierarchy, colonized New England; the Reformation, emancipating the Low Countries, led to settlements on the Hudson.. The Netherlands divide with England the glory of having planted the first colonies in the United States; and they divide the glory of having set the example of public freedom. If England gave our fathers the idea of a popular representation, the United Provinces were their model of a federal union.

At the discovery of America, the Netherlands possessed the municipal institutions of the Roman world and the feudal liberties of the middle ages. The landed aristocracy, the hierarchy, and the municipalities exercised political franchises. The municipal officers, in part appointed by the sovereign, in part perpetuating themselves, had common interests with the industrious citizens, from whom they were selected; and the nobles, cherishing the feudal right of resisting arbitrary taxation, joined the citizens in defending national liberty against encroachments.

The urgencies of war, the Reformation, perhaps also the arrogance of power, often tempted Charles V. to violate the constitutions of the Netherlands. Philip II., on his accession in 1559, formed the purpose of subverting them, and found