hird patent, by which all the islands
within three hundred leagues of the Virginia shore were granted to the
patentees, and by which a portion of the power heretofore vested in
the council was transferred to the whole company. The political rights
of the colonists remained the same but they acquired gradually peace
and tranquillity. Tobacco was extensively cultivated, and proved a
more fruitful source of wealth than mines of silver or gold.

The jealousy of arbitrary power, and impatience of liberty among the
new settlers, induced the Governor of Virginia, in 1619, to reinstate
them in the full possession of the rights of Englishmen; and he
accordingly convoked a Provincial Assembly, the first ever held in
America, which consisted of the governor, the council, and a number of
burgesses, elected by the eleven existing boroughs of the colony. The
deliberation and laws of this infant legislature were transmitted to
England for approval; and so wise and judicious were these, that the
company, soon after, approved and ratified the platform of what
gradually ripened into the American representative system.

[Sidenote: Rapid Colonization.]

The guarantee of political rights led to a rapid colonization. "Men
were now willing to regard Virginia as their home. They fell to
building houses and planting corn." Women were induced to leave the
parent country to become the wives of adventurous planters; and,
during the space of three years, thirty-five hundred persons, of both
sexes, found their way to Virginia. In the year 1620, a Dutch ship,
from the coast of Guinea, arrived in James River, and landed twenty
negroes for sale; and, as they were found more capable of enduring
fatigue, in a southern climate, than the Europeans, they were
continually imported, until a large proportion of the inhabitants of
Virginia was composed of slaves. Thus was introduced, at this early
period, that lasting system of injustice and cruelty which has proved
already an immeasurable misfortune to the country, as well as a
disgrace to the institutions of republican liberty, but which is
lamented, in many instances, by no class with more sincerity than by
those who live by the produce of slave labor itself.

The succeeding year, which witnessed the importation of negroes,
beheld the cultivation of tobacco, which before the introduction of
cotton, was the great staple of southern produce.

[Sidenote: Indian Warfare.]

In 1622, the long-suppressed enm