The colony had now been planted mindedness which wrought the for twelve years and had taken miracle owe to this great-souled deep enough root to give good hope good fellow? It is Pleasant to see of permanency. With the excep-him, in imagination, listening to tion of the little settlement of "Argall's Gift," it was soattared some seven miles along James; River, and was six or wide. Its inhabitants seven miles numbered about two thousand. The ruinous community plan had been abandoned. Every man had now his own allotment of land, and when his day's work was done could sit down under his own vine and fig tree. For protection from the Indians, as well as for good neighbourhood, the emigrants established themselves in groups called variously "city," "borough," "hundred" or "plantation." There were (besides Jamestown) ten of these settlements of cabins and cottages, in the midst of gardens and fields—each duly fortified against the Indians with wooden palisades.
Experiments were being made in improving native crops, and the products of England and other countries were being tried out in Virginia soil. In tobacco the colony possessed a new commodity, for which there was constantly increasing demand across the sea. Plans were afoot for the establishment, at Henricopolis—on James River—of a schoo] and college for the education of children of the red man as well as of the white man.
Such was Virginia when dawned the first election day in the colony—and in America.
The First General Assembly, In accordance with his instruction, "Sir George Yeardley, Knight, Governor and Captain-General of Virginia, having sent his summons all over the country, there were chosen two representatives for each borough." Bright and early in the dazzling heat of that morning of July 30, 1619 (or some time during the day before it), each councillor and burgess spurred his horse or set his sloop's sail toward Jamestown. From Charles City and the City of Henricus came the burgesses—two by two. From Martin's Brandon, Martin's Hundred and Lawne's Plantation they came; from Ward's Plantation, Argall's' Gift and Flowerdieu Hundred; from Smith's Hundred and Kecoughtan and of course James Citie" had its own two representatives.
It was in a Virginia church—St. John's, Richmond—that Patrick Henry, when the rights which England had given America were endangered, cried, "Give me liberty or give me death!' And it was in the small wooden church at Jamestown in Virginia that the transplanted Englishmen who were the earliest Americans met in General Assembly, to exercise those rights for the first time.
In the language of the Secretary, Master John Pory—who was also made Speaker of the House—it is written:
"The most' convenient place we could finde to sift in-was the Quire of the Church, where Sir George Yeardley, the Governor, being sett own in his accustomed place, those of the Counsel of Estate sate next him on both handes, except only the Secretary then appointed Speaker, who sate right before him, John Twine, Clerke of the General Assembly, being placed next the Speaker, and Thomas Pierse, the Sergeant, standing at the barra to be ready for any service the Assembly should command him."
At the first Legislature in any of the English colonies, this Assembly may fairly be regarded as not only the forerunner of American colonial and State legislatures, and of the United States Congress, but also of Canadian, Australian and African parliaments.
It must be remembered that the coming of the Pilgrim Fathers to Plymouth was still more than a year off, and that among the French to the north or Spaniards to the south, such an innovation as a popular elected Legislature was not to be dreamed of. It was only through the lonely outpost of England dri the banks of James River that government of the people, by the people, for the people, could have been brought to the Western world in that year of grace, 1619.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.