they believed long before the Revolution. As early as 1736 Sir
John Randolph reminded the burgesses:

We must consider ourselves chosen by all the People; sent hither to
represent them, to give their Consent in the weightiest of their
Concerns; and to bind them by Laws which may advance their Common
Good. Herein they trust you with all that they have, place the
greatest Confidence in your Wisdoms and Discretions, and testify
the highest Opinion of your virtue.[5]

[5] Journal of House of Burgesses, 5 August 1736.

When Randolph made these remarks, he was telling the burgesses what
they already knew and at a time when there were no pressing public
issues. It was this abiding interrelationship between electorate and
representatives which was the strength of the Virginia political
system. The gentry extolled republicanism not only because it seemed
the right and just attitude but also because it worked.

The small farmers and slaveholders acted as a restraint upon any
tendency toward oligarchy which the gentry might have entertained. The
small farmers were in the majority and they had the right to vote. The
percentage of white males who voted in the 18th Century elections was
quite high. True, the colonial voters elected only the burgesses, but
that single choice was an important guarantee of their rights, since
the House of Burgesses was the strongest political body in Virginia.
Thomas Jefferson once remarked that the election process itself tended
to eliminate class conflicts and extremism: the planter aristocrat with
no concern for the small farmer was not apt to be elected, and the man
who demagogically courted the popular vote was ostracized by the
gentry. Therefore, the House of Burgesses became, at the same time, the
center of planter rule and of popular government.[6]

[6] For a short well-written discussion of the election process
see Charles S. Sydnor, Gentlemen Freeholders: Political Practices
in Washington's Virginia (University of North Carolina, 1952,
reprinted in paperback as Revolutionaries in the Making:
Political Practices in Washington's Virginia.)

The constitutional philosophy of the House of Burgesses proclaimed in
response to the Grenville revenue program in 1764 was not new. When
Patrick Henry electrified the burgesses with his Stamp Act Resolves in
May 1765, he was not setting forth a new concept of government, he was
reaffirming, in