After the colony had submitted to the commissioners, sent out by parliament, a provisional government was established, until the pleasure of parliament should be known. This was done at a grand assembly, held at James' City in April, 1652.

The proceedings of this assembly on this subject, are thus stated on the records. "After long and serious debate and advice taken for the settling and governing of Virginia, it was unanimously voted and concluded by the commissioners appointed here by authority of parliament, and by the burgesses of the several counties and plantations respectively, until the farther pleasure of the States be known; that Richard Bennet be governor for this ensuing year, or until the next meeting of the assembly, with all the just powers and authorities that may belong to that place lawfully."

A council of state and secretary were elected at the same time, and were to execute their powers, according to such instructions as they might receive from the parliament of England, the known law of England, and the acts of assembly here established and all elections of officers were to be made by the burgesses. In March, 1655-6, Edmund Diggs was appointed governor, by the grand assembly, and in the same month of 1657-8, Samuel Matthews was chosen governor until the next assembly, or until the further pleasure of the supreme power in England be known; and the next year Matthews was re-appointed for two years longer. The governor and council, sometime in the year 1658, having undertaken to dissolve the house of burgesses, the house denied their power to do this; and in April, 1658, published the following declaration and had it entered on record.

The burgesses taking into consideration the many inlets and obstructions in the affairs of this assembly, and conceiving that some persons of the present council endeavor, by setting up their own power to destroy the apparent power resident only in the burgesses, representatives of the people, as is manifest by the records of the assembly :

We, the burgesses, do declare, that we have in ourselves the full power of the election and appointment of all officers in this country, until such time as we shall have order to the contrary from the supreme power in England, all which is evident upon the assembly records. And for the better manifestation thereof, and the present despatch of the affairs of this country, we declare as followeth: That we are not dissolvable by any power yet extant in Virginia, but our own,-that all former elections of governor and council be void and null. That the power of governor for the future be conferred on Samuel Matthews, Esq. who shall be invested with all the just rights and privileges belonging to the governor and captain general of Virginia, and that a council shall be nominated, appointed and confirmed by the present burgesses convened, (with the advice of the governor, for his assistance,) and that for the future none be admitted a councilor, but such who shall be nominated and confirmed by the house of burgesses, as aforesaid, until further order from the supreme power in England.

After the resignation of Richard Cromwell, the son of Oliver, the Virginians deemed it necessary again, by a special act, to take the power of government into their hands. "Whereas, by reason of the late distractions, (which God in his mercy hath put a sudden period to,) there being in England no resident, absolute and general confessed power,-Be it enacted and confirmed, that the supreme power of the government of this country shall be resident in the assembly, and that all writs issue in the name of the grand assembly of Virginia, until such a command and commission come out of England, as be by the assembly judged lawful." The old governor Sir William Berkely, was at the same time elected governor by the assembly, and it was enjoined upon him to call an assembly once in two years at least, or oftener if necessary; and the same assembly gave him power to make choice of a council and secretary with the approbation of the assembly, and restrained him from dissolving the assembly, without the consent of the major part of the house. From these records it is evident that Cromwell, during his administration, appointed no governor in Virginia, and indeed had no agency in directing the affairs of that colony, but that the whole was managed by the house of burgesses.

In reviewing the policy of Great Britain in her commercial intercourse with her colonies, Mr. Grahame concurs with Adam Smith, in condemning the navigation acts, as they relate to the parent country, as well as to the colonies; and he very justly considers, that the modern discoveries in political science, have proved, that the intercourse between nations as between individuals, to be lasting and beneficial, should be "founded on the principles of a fair reciprocity and mutual subservience;" and that "to do as we would be done by, is not less the maxim of prudence, than the precept of piety." After referring to the British navigation acts and their effects, he says, "in such mistaken policy, nations are apt to be confirmed, by the interested representations of the few, who contrive to extract a temporary and partial advantage from every abuse, however generally pernicious; and if, in spite of the defects of its policy, the prosperity of the country should be increased, by the force of its natural advantages, this effect will be eagerly ascribed to the very causes that abridge, though they may be insufficient to prevent it. The discoveries, however, which the cultivation of political science has yielded, have in this respect confirmed the dictates of religion, and demonstrated, that, in every transaction between nations and individuals, the intercourse most solidly and lastingly beneficial is that, which is founded on the principles of a fair reciprocity and mutual subservience; that an indisposition to regard the interests of others, implies a narrow and perverted view of our own; and that to do as we VOL. II.

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would be done by, is not less the maxim of prudence than the precept of piety.'

Mr. Grahame views the conduct of the parent country in sending her convicted felons to her colonies, as equally unwise and unjust; and tells us, what we had not before noticed, that this practice first originated from a suggestion of chief justice Popham, made from interested motives. James the first, it is well known, in the exercise of his royal prerogative, adopted the measure of sending dissolute persons to Virginia. "He was indebted" says our author, "for the suggestion, to chief justice Popham, who, being a proprietor of colonial territory, as well as a judge, conceived the project of rendering the administration of justice subservient to his colonial designs, and had destined New-England in particular to anticipate the uses of Botany Bay."

The ill effects of this were so severely felt in Maryland, that as early as 1676, laws were passed by the assembly of that province, against the importation of convicts, and afterwards continued; bu Mr. Grahame says he was unable to discover, whether any notice of these laws was taken by the British government. Our author must have overlooked the last work of Mr. Chalmers, the author of the Political Annals, containing "The opinions of eminent lawyers on various points of English jurisprudence, chiefly relating to the colonies, etc." printed in London, in 1814. He would have discovered, that those laws of Maryland, as well as a law of Virginia relative to the same subject, did not escape the notice of the crown, and were disallowed, as derogatory to royal and parliamentary authority.

In an appendix to the second volume, our author has given us what he calls, "State and prospects of the North American provinces at the close of the seventeenth century, and sentiments and opinions of the colonists respecting the sovereignty and policy of Great Britain, etc." These will be read with great interest by all, who revere the character of our ancestors, and who may wish to trace to their source, the causes of the American revolution.

"In the colonial establishments of the French, the Spaniards and the Portuguese," says Mr. Grahame, "the royal government was stronger and more arbitrary, and subordination more strictly enforced, than in the parent States. Illiberal institutions, remote from the power and splendor of the thrones to which they were allied, required to be guarded with peculiar strictness from the intrusion of opinions and practices that savored of freedom. It was otherwise," he remarks, "in the British colonies, where the grafts of constitutional liberty that had been transplanted from the parent State, expanded with a vigor proportioned to their distance from the rival shoots of royalty and aristocracy, with which they were theoretically connected. Not only did these colonies enjoy domestic constitutions favorable to liberty, but there existed in the minds of the great bulk of the people, a democratic spirit and resolution, that practically re

duced the power of the parent State, even below the standard of its theory. Many causes seem to have contributed to the formation of this spirit, and to the production of sentiments and habits conducive to its efficacy.

"All the colonial charters were extorted by interest or importunity, from princes noted for arbitrary designs or perfidious characters; and no sooner had these charters produced the effect of collecting numerous and thriving communities in America, than some of them were, and all of them would have been annulled, if the dynasty of the Stuarts had been much farther prolonged. The designs of these princes were not entirely abandoned by their successors at the British revolution. For many years after, the American colonists were roused to continued contests in defense of their charters, which the English court made several attempts to qualify or annul. These defensive efforts, and the success with which they were crowned, tended powerfully to keep alive an active and vigilant spirit of liberty in America."

"Happily for the stability of American freedom," he adds, "it was impossible for the first generation of colonists to succeed in effecting their settlements, and attaining a secure and prosperous establishment, without the exercise of virtues, and the formation of a character, that guarantied the preservation of the blessings, to which they had conducted. Even the calamities of French and Indian war with which some of the provinces long continued to be harassed, contributed to preserve a spirit and habits, without which their people might have been unable in the eighteenth century to achieve their independence. If the later settlements of New-Jersey and Pennsylvania were exempted, in some degree, from the discipline of those hardships and difficulties with which the commencement of all the other settlements was attended, they were happily peopled, in a great degree, by a class of sectaries, whose habits and manners were peculiarly favorable to industry and good morals, and congenial to the spirit of republican constitutions. The Quakers, indeed, have been much more successful in leavening American society with manners favorable to liberty, than with principles allied to their own political doctrines.”

The various contests between the parent state and the colonies, from the first settlement of the latter, to the commencement of the eighteenth century, as well as afterwards, up to the beginning of the American revolution, evince most clearly, that the true political relation between the two countries was not perfectly ascertained or understood. A difference of opinion on this important question, as indicated in a variety of cases that occurred from the first commencement of the colonies, and finally on the great question of parliamentary taxation, led to a separation. On this subject the author very justly states;

A considerable variety and indistinctness of opinion prevailed, both in Europe and America, respecting the precise import of the political relation subsisting between the two countries. It was at first the maxim of the English court, that the crown was the only member of the British constitution which possessed jurisdiction over colonies. All the charters were framed in conformity with this maxim, except the charter of Pennsylvania. The colonies were by no means uniform in the sentiments which they expressed on this subject. They complained very generally of an unjust usurpation of power over them by the British parliament, when the navigation acts were passed; and openly maintained, on many

occasions, that an act of parliament was not binding on America. Yet they scrupled not to complain of their grievances to the houses of parliament, and to invoke from time to time, parliamentary interposition in their behalf. The New-England states alone seemed to have perceived, from the first, the advantages they might derive from adhering to the maxim, that they were politically connected only with the king, and not at all with the parliament; and with singular prudence forbore to ask favors from parliament, by which they were regarded with especial favor, lest they should seem to sanction parliamentary interference with their concerns. But the revolution of 1688, established firmly the supreme power of the parliament, and enforced the submission of America to its legislative control, and from this period, all the measures, by which the British government proposed to affect the public interests of the colonists, were pursued through the medium of parliamentary enactment. No taxation was practically attempted by the parliament, except what arose from the regulation of commerce; but a power was assumed to alter the American charters, or at least to modify the constitutions which these charters had created. There was one point, indeed, in which the relation of the colonies to the royal prerogative, seemed still to be acknowledged. It was not to the house of Lords, or to any of the ordinary tribunals of England, that appeals were carried from the judgments of the American courts, but to the king in council; and it was the same organ that enjoyed the power of modifying and rescinding the provincial laws which were deemed repugnant to English jurisprudence.

The colonists, Mr. Grahame remarks, submitted to the power of parliament with manifest reluctance, not from conviction, but necessity," being overawed by the strength of Britain and encumbered by the dangerous vicinity of the French in Canada."

The trial of Culpepper in England, in 1688, under the statute of 35th of Henry VIII. for supposed high treason in Carolina, is given us by Mr. Grahame with greater particularity, than by most other historians. This trial and the circumstances attending it became more interesting, as it was about a century afterwards, considered by the British ministers, as a conclusive precedent for a similar proceeding against the people of Massachusetts. It is well known, that before the grant of the Carolinas to Lord Clarendon and others, settlements had been commenced in the northern parts of that province, not only by emigrants from New-England, but also from Virginia. The latter had planted themselves at a place called Albermarle, and the proprietaries allowed them a government by themselves, in which the people had the greatest share. Here was a place of refuge for criminals, and an asylum for fugitive debtors. Persons of the latter description, were by a most extraordinary law, protected against civil suits for any cause of action arising beyond the limits of the settlement, for the term of five years after their arrival, and all the inhabitants were prohibited from accepting powers of attorney from abroad, for the recovery of debts. The New-Englanders, at a very early period, commenced a trade with these settlers, and about the year 1676, had obtained a complete