atives 'the
most towardly boys in wit and the graces' should be educated and set
apart to the work of converting the Indians to the Christian
religion; stringent penalties were attached to idleness, gambling,
and drunkenness; excess in apparel was prohibited by heavy taxation;
encouragement was given to agriculture in all its known forms;
while conceding 'the commission of privileges' brought over by the
new Governor as their fundamental law, yet with the liberty-guarding
instinct of their race they kept the way open for seeking redress,
'in case they should find aught not perfectly squaring with the
state of the colony.' No less important were the enactments
regulating the dealings of the colonists with the Indians. Yet to
be mentioned, and of transcendent importance, was the claim of the
burgesses 'to allow or disallow,' at their own good pleasure,
all orders of the court of the London Company. And deeply significant
was the declaration of these representatives of three centuries
ago, that their enactments were instantly to be put in force,
without waiting for their ratification in England. And not to
be forgotten is the stupendous fact that while the battle with the
untamed forces of nature was yet waging, and conflict with savage foe
of constant recurrence, these legislators provided for the maintenance
of public worship, and took the initial steps for the establishment
of an institution of learning. It is not too much to say that the
hour that witnessed these enactments witnessed the triumph of
the popular over the court party; in no unimportant sense, the
first triumph of the American colonists over kingly prerogative.
Looking through the mists of the mighty past, Mr. Speaker, to
the House of Burgesses, over which your first predecessor presided,
would it be out of place to apply to that assemblage the
historic words spoken of one of a later period: 'Nobles by the
right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a
mightier hand'?

"Did the occasion permit, it would be of wondrous interest to linger
for a time with these, the earliest colonies in this, the cradle
of American civilization; to know something of their daily life,
their hopes and ambitions, their struggles and triumphs; something
of their ceaseless vigil and of the perils that environed them; to
recall stirring incidents and heroic achievements; to catch a gleam
of a spirit of self-sacrifice and devotion which in all the annals
o