CHAPTER VII. YOUNG VIRGINIA

The choice of Sir Edwyn Sandys as Treasurer of the Virginia Company in 1619
marks a turningpoint in the history of both Company and colony. At a moment
when James I was aiming at absolute monarchy and was menacing Parliament,
Sandys and his party--the Liberals of the day--turned the sessions of the
Company into a parliament where momentous questions of state and colonial
policy were freely debated. The liberal spirit of Sandys cast a beam of
light, too, across the Atlantic. When Governor Yeardley stepped ashore at
Jamestown in mid-April, he brought with him, as the first fruits of the new
regime, no less a boon than the grant of a representative assembly.

There were to be in Virginia, subject to the Company, subject in its turn
to the Crown, two "Supreme Councils," one of which was to consist of the
Governor and his councilors chosen by the Company in England. The other was
to be elected by the colonists, two representatives or burgesses from each
distinct settlement. Council and House of Burgesses were to constitute the
upper and lower houses of the General Assembly. The whole had power to
legislate upon Virginian affairs within the bounds of the colony, but the
Governor in Virginia and the Company in England must approve its acts.

A mighty hope in small was here! Hedged about with provisions, curtailed
and limited, here nevertheless was an acorn out of which, by natural growth
and some mutation, was to come popular government wide and deep. The
planting of this small seed of freedom here, in 1619, upon the banks of the
James in Virginia, is an event of prime importance.

On the 30th of July, 1619, there was convened in the log church in
Jamestown the first true Parliament or Legislative Assembly in America.