from that of slaves chiefly in the duration of their bondage; the laws of the colony favored their early enfranchisement. But this state of labor easily admitted the introduction of perpetual servitude. In the month of August, 1619, five years after the commons of France had petitioned for the emancipation of every serf in every fief, a Dutch man-of-war entered James river and landed twenty negroes for sale. This is the sad epoch of the introduction of negro slavery; but the traffic would have been checked in its infancy had it remained with the Dutch. Thirty years after this first importation of Africans, Virginia to one black contained fifty whites; and, after seventy years of its colonial existence, the number of its negro slaves was proportionably much less than in several northern states at the time of the war of independence. Had no other form of servitude been known in Virginia than of men of the same race, every difficulty would have been promptly obviated. But the Ethiopian and Caucasian races were to meet together in nearly equal numbers beneath a temperate zone. Who could foretell the issue? The negro race, from its introduction, was regarded with disgust, and its union with the whites forbidden under ignominious penalties.

If Wyatt, on his arrival in Virginia in 1621, found the evil of negro slavery engrafted on the social system, he brought with him the memorable ordinance on which the fabric of colonial liberty was to rest, and which was interpreted by his instructions in a manner favorable to the colonists. An amnesty of ancient feuds was proclaimed. In November and December, 1621, the first session of an assembly under the written constitution was held. The production of silk engaged attention; but silk-worms could not be cared for where every comfort of household existence required to be created. As little was the successful culture of the vine possible, although the company had repeatedly sent vine-dressers. In 1621, the seeds of cotton were planted as an experiment; and their " plentiful coming up" was a subject of interest in America and England. From this year, too, dates the sending of beehives to Virginia, and of skilful workmen to extract iron from the ore. At the instance of George Sandys, five-and-twenty shipwrights came over in 1622.

Nor did the company neglect education and religious worship. The bishop of London collected and paid a thousand pounds toward a university, which, like the several churches of the colony, was liberally endowed with domains, and fostered by public and private charity. But the plan of obtaining for them a revenue through a permanent tenantry could meet with no success where freeholds were so easily obtained. "Needless novelties" in the forms of worship were prohibited by an instruction from England.

Between the Indians and the English there had been quarrels, but no wars. From the first the power of the natives had been despised; their strongest weapons were such arrows as they could shape without the use of iron, such hatchets as could be made from stone; and an English mastiff seemed to them a terrible adversary. Within sixty miles of Jamestown, it is computed, there were no more than five thousand souls, or about fifteen hundred warriors. The rule of Powhatan comprehended about eight thousand square miles, thirty tribes, and twenty-four hundred warriors. The natives dwelt in hamlets, with from forty to sixty in each household. Few assemblages of wigwams contained more than two hundred persons. It was unusual for any large portion of these tribes to meet together. They were regarded with contempt or compassion. No uniform care had been taken to conciliate their good-will, although their condition had been improved by some of the arts of civilized life. When Wyatt arrived, he assured them of his wish to preserve inviolable peace. An old law, which made death the penalty for teaching the Indians to use a musket, was forgotten, and they were employed as fowlers and huntsmen. The plantations of the English were extended for one hundred and forty miles on both sides of the James river and toward the Potomac, wherever rich grounds invited to the culture of tobacco.

Powhatan, the friend of the English, died in 1618; and his brother was the heir to his influence. By this time the natives were near being driven "to seek a stranger countrie;" to save their ancient dwelling-places, it seemed to them that the English must be exterminated. On the twenty-second of March, 1622, at mid-day, they fell upon the unsuspecting pop

ulation; children and women, as well as men, the missionary, the benefactor-all were slain with every aggravation of cruelty. In one hour three hundred and forty-seven persons were cut off. The night before the execution of the conspiracy it had been revealed by a converted Indian to an Englishman whom he wished to rescue; Jamestown and the nearest settlements were prepared against the attack; the savages, as timid as they were ferocious, fled at the appearance of wakeful resistance; and the larger part of the colony was saved.

But public works were abandoned, and the settlements reduced from eighty plantations to less than eight. Sickness prevailed among the dispirited survivors, who were crowded into narrow quarters; some returned to their mother country. The number of inhabitants had exceeded four thousand; a year after the massacre there remained only two thousand five hundred.

The blood of the victims became the nurture of the plantation. Even King James, for a moment, affected generosity; gave from the Tower of London arms which had been thrown by as good for nothing in Europe; and made fair promises, which were never fulfilled. The city of London and many private persons displayed hearty liberality. The London company, which in May, 1622, had elected Nicholas Ferrar to be Lord Southampton's deputy, "redoubled their courages," and urged the Virginians not to change their abode, nor apply all their thoughts to staple commodities, but "to embellish the Sparta upon which they had lighted." While they bade them "not to rely upon anything but themselves," they yet promised "that there should not be left any meanes unattempted on their part." They announced their purpose of sending, before the next spring, four hundred young men, well furnished, out of England and Wales; and that private undertakers had engaged to take over many hundreds more. As to the Indians, they wrote: "The innocent blood of so many Christians doth in justice cry out for revenge. We must advise you to root out a people so cursed, at least to the removal of them far from you. Wherefore, as they have merited, let them have a perpetual war without peace or truce, and without mercy too. Put in execution all ways and means

for their destruction, not omitting to reward their neighboring enemies upon the bringing in of their heads."

The arrival of these instructions found the Virginians already involved in a war of extermination. First in the field was George Sandys, the colonial treasurer, who headed two expeditions; next, Yeardley, the governor, invaded the towns of Opechancanough; Captain Madison entered the Potomac. The Indians promptly fled on indications of watchfulness and resistance; but the midnight surprise, the ambuscade by day, might be feared; and they proved to be "an enemy not suddenly to be destroyed with the sword, by reason of their swiftness of foot, and advantages of the wood to which upon all assaults they retired."

In July, 1623, the inhabitants of the several settlements, in parties, under commissioned officers, fell upon the adjoining savages; and a law of the general assembly commanded that in July of 1624 the attack should be repeated. Six years later, the colonial statute-book proves that ruthless schemes were still meditated; for it was enacted that no peace should be concluded with the Indians-a law which remained in force

for two years.

Meantime, a change was preparing in the relations of the colony with the parent state. The earl of Southampton and his friends gave their services freely, having no motive but the advancement of the plantation; the adherents of the former treasurer, among whom Argall was conspicuous, under the lead of the earl of Warwick, constituted a relentless faction. As the shares in the stock were of little value, the contests were chiefly for the direction, and were not so much the wranglings of disappointed merchants as the conflict of political parties. The meetings of the company, which now consisted of a thousand adventurers, of whom two hundred or more usually appeared at the quarter courts, were the scenes for freedom of debate, where the patriots, who in parliament advocated the cause of liberty, triumphantly opposed the decrees of the privy council on subjects connected with the rights of Virginia. The unsuccessful party sought an ally in the king, who desired to recover the authority of which he had deprived himself by a charter of his own concession.

Moreover, Gondomar, the Spanish envoy, said to him: "The Virginia courts are but a seminary to a seditious parliament." Besides, he was haunted by a passion to wed his eldest surviving son to a princess of the house of Spain, and therefore courted the favor of the Spanish monarch, even at the sacrifice of an English colony.

Unable to get the control of the company by overawing their assemblies, the monarch resolved upon the sequestration of the patent; and raised no other question than how the law of England could most plausibly be made the instrument of tyranny. An allegation of grievances, set forth by the royalist faction in a petition to the king, was, in May, 1623, fully refuted by the company, and the ground of discontent was answered by an explanatory declaration. Yet commissioners were appointed to engage in a general investigation of the concerns of the corporation; the records were seized, the deputy treasurer imprisoned, and private letters from Virginia intercepted for inspection. Captain John Smith was particularly examined; his honest answers exposed the defective arrangements of previous years, and he favored the cancelling of the charter as an act of benevolence to the colony.

To the Virginia quarter court, held on the twenty-fifth of June for the annual election, James sent a very short letter, in which he said: "Our will and pleasure is that you do forbear the election of any officers until to-morrow fortnight at the soonest, but let those that be already remain as they are in the mean time." The reading of the letter was followed by a long and general silence, after which it was voted that the present officers should be continued because, by the express words of their charter, choice could be made only at a quarter court.

The king, enraged at the company, held the citing of their charter as a mere pretext to thwart his command; and on the last day of July the attorney-general, to whom the conduct of the company was referred, gave it as his opinion that the king might justly resume the government of Virginia, and, should they not voluntarily yield, could call in their patent by legal proceedings. In pursuance of this advice, the king, in October, by an order in council, made known to the company that