Give Me Liberty

f Virginia. Two decades earlier Sir Walter Raleigh had sent out a group of settlers to what is now North Carolina, and they had disappeared mysteriously. What had happened to them? men asked. Had

h water. It was a smiling country which seemed to bid them welcome. But when they entered the mouth of a broad river, which they called the James in honor of their King, and made their way up into the country,

y had been abiding" in England. Even without this promise they would have taken it for granted that they were not surrendering the freedom derived from their ancestors. This was the view taken six decades later by Francis Moryson and Thomas Ludwell, agent

w home. They claimed, also, the habeas corpus, jury trial, and freedom from taxation save by their own consent. In England not even the King could take a man's money legally until

sperately tired of anarchy; they were tired also of the oppressions of the barons. So long as the King put an end to both they had no desire to limit his power. The Commons ate out of his hand. Henry VI

e universities, the expansion of world horizons fired the imagination and awakened men to their own potentialities. Self-government is a tender plant which withers in t

e duty of the people was to obey. If they did not, like bad children they should be scolded and perhaps punished, since it was not only illegal but wicked to question the King's authority. "As to dispute what God may do is blasphemy, so it is sedition in subjects to dispute what a K

ileges save by royal grace, they replied that he had been misinformed. When in answer to James' demand that they refrain from meddling in foreign affairs, the

ernment." There is a general fear among the people, they told James, that royal proclamations might eventually assume the nature of laws

ngement on their rights than was Parliament. And the fortunes of the contending forces in the mother country affected profoundly those in the colonies. Echoes of the First Stuart Despotism, t

r made men self-reliant and resourceful and impatient of control by a distant monarch, ever ready to defend old rights, quick to demand new ones. "People remote from the seat of government are always

n in the tobacco fields of Virginia were, most of them, desperately poor. Many came under terms of indenture. But they had, prior to the introduction of slaves in large

trol of the proposed colony in his own hands. There was to be a Council resident in England appointed by him and responsible to him. This body was to name another Council which was to reside in Virginia and administer th

uch disorder and suffering. But never was there a more quarrelsome set of men. The fleet had been at sea but a few days when Captain John Smith was accused of plotting to overthrow the

his little group, set down in the wilderness and faced with many perils, would have occupied their time better than with plotting against each other. They had enough to

ith, and Martin were now the only remaining Councillors. But this did not bring harmony. Kendall was accused of plotting against the other two, tried, and hanged. Smith, too, was in danger of the gallows, when he was held responsible for the death of two men who had been killed by the Indians. Were the "whipping,

er empowering them to change it. But for a remedy they turned, not to self-government, but to despotism. They abolished the old Council, and turned the colony over to a Governor

Warr was a man of distinction and ability. He had studied at the Queen's College, Oxford, had served

were united in their efforts to serve their Governor and bring a degree of prosperity to the colony. The sound of hammering and sawing was heard on all sides as little houses were built, the fort repaired, the church restored. "Every Sunday, when the Lord Governor went to church, he was accompanied

stus, but they suffered from the cruelty of the insane Caligula and the dissolute Nero. So it boded no good for Virginia when De la Warr fell ill. "I was welcomed by a hot and violent ague," he tells us. This was followed by an attack of dysentery. "Then t

rtain laws, orders, and instructions which he posted in the church at Jamestown. As the people crowded into the little building to read them they must have expressed their resentment and horror, for the laws were more suited to a penal colony than to a community of fr

rd to be condemned to the galleys for six months." Equally severe was the law that "no man shall give any disgraceful words or commit any act to the disgrace of any person ... upon pain of being tied head and feet together upon the guard every night for the space of one month." T

f 1624 testified that the colony suffered "under most severe and cruel laws sent over in print," contrary to the King's promise. And these laws were "mercilessly executed, often times without trial or judgment." Some who sought relief by fleeing to the Indians were captured and executed, either by hanging, or shooting, or even by being broken

eam of migrating to Virginia to set up a government there which would be sympathetic with their views. "Many worthy patriots, lords, knights, gentlemen, merchants, and others ... laid hold on ... Virginia as a pr

is authority from a contract with the people, and not by divine right. Later, when as a member of the Commons he enunciated this theory, he drew down on his head James' bitter hatred. Sandys, who had long been a member of the Council of the London Company, was elected to the important post of Treasurer in 1617. To pr

that this was necessary for the success of the enterprise. The second charter, granted in 1609, is of especial importance because by it the

religious struggle which was convulsing the nation. At times the Quarter Courts resounded with the angry debates of the contending parties. A momentous struggle

ht to representative government. Lord De la Warr, who was still the Governor, had expected to leave at that time with this famous document. But his sa

probably duplicates of the Magna Carta, authorizing him to hold an election for a General Assembly.[14] His instructions have been preserved, but his commission, or constitution for the c

ly and no oftener but for very extraordinary and important occasions, shall consist for the present of the said Council of State, and two Burgesses out of every town, hundred, or other particular plantation, to be respectively chosen by the inhabitants." This body, which was called the General Assembl

it was put to the authority of the Assembly by a provision that no law should "continue in force" unless ratified by the Company. But a degree of independence was granted in the instruction that "a

perhaps tears of joy in the crowd which assembled in Jamestown to listen to his proclamation. It promised that those cruel laws by which they had so

members of the Council sat beside him, some on one side, some on the other. "But forasmuch as men's affairs do little prosper when God's service is neglected, all the Burgesses t

he instructions of the London Company. During the first session, acts were passed concerning the Church, Indian affairs, land patents, morality, prices, trade, etc. But by far the most

r the first session of the Virginia Assembly the New York Assembly reminded Governor Robert Hunter that their inherent right "to dispose of the money of the freemen" did "not proceed from any commission, letters patent, or other grant from the Crown, but from the free choice and election of

the people in all the colonies which made it possible to win victory after victory over the royal Governors. It is an old saying that one dare not quarrel with one's paymaster. Yet that was just what most of the Governors had to do. They ne

inted by the Governor, but to the Burgesses. The question of who was to receive the revenues and who to decide upon their use was

But they could not have expected him to assent meekly to the duplication in the infant colony of the Parliament, the body which was c

ve the death blow...."[19] He began by ordering a certain Nathaniel Butler to write a pamphlet describing conditions in Virginia. In his Unmasking of Virginia, as he called it, Butler drew a vivid picture of

that the blame must rest on the Company. "If his Majesty's first grant of April 10, 1606, ... had been pursued, much better effects had been produced than had been by the alteration thereof

government." These assistants were to appoint a Governor and twelve assistants to reside in Virginia, "whereby all matters of importance may be directed by his Majesty."[22] In essence this was the original plan of 1606. There was "h

rom the King warning them not to meddle in the affair. "Ourselves will make it our work to settle t

nment, they were in despair. Was liberty to be overthrown? Were they to be subjected again to the brutality of a Dale or an Argall? They wrote the Privy Council praying that future Governors should not have

already issued a quo warranto against the Company. Sandys and others fought the case before the King's Bench,

this charge was wiped off the books by dissolving the Company, it would remain for decades as a burden on the colony. No doubt this may have influenced James in his decision. But he himself said that it had not been his intention to revoke the charters until the Company drove him to it by refusing to resign the government into his hands. He

" he appointed a commission headed by Lord Henry Mandeville, to manage the colony in the meanwhile. This body's first step was to reappoint Governor Fra

have delayed the development of self-government in Virginia by decades. But before he could complete the draft, death o

n replied in a long document entitled "The Discourse of the Old Company of Virginia," advising the King to restore the Company. This Charles had no intention of doing. On May 23, 1625, he issued a proclamation declaring "that his intention was that the government of

ed it might lead to the abolishing of representative government. Now that the Company no longer existed they pleaded earnestly to be permitted to keep the Assembly. In June, 1625, the Governor and Council wrote the Privy Council as

ges. Still they made no promise that the people should have a voice in the government. And the King, because of "many other urgent occasions," still delayed making a permanent settlement of V

Council. But they preferred to keep alive the spark of representative government. So they called together unofficial gatherings of leading citizens to sit with

House of Burgesses, had they been appointed by the Governor and Council, would not have presumed to tax the people for the funds necess

een assured of a monopoly of the English market by the exclusion of foreign tobacco and the prohibition of tobacco planting in England, and not hampered by high custom duties, it would have brought prosperity and rapid growth.[28]

his consent, either directly or through his representative. So he directed the Governor to hold a general election of Burgesses, summon an Assembly, and place his proposition before them. Thus he gave official recognition to the House of Burgesses, and it was

ir Edwin Sandys, the champion of liberty in Virginia, was also a champion of liberty in the mother country. Had absolutism won in England, its victory in the colony would have been certain. And had

e English settlements. Had absolutism been firmly rooted in Virginia, the Stuart Kings might have tried to set it up in all the colonies. The Massa

ures which had the right to levy taxes. It is this which forced the Duke of York to call an Assembly in New York in 1684. When the American patriots of 1775 took up arms because Parliament insisted on taxing the

TNO

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