anwhile, Jefferson and his friends lost no time in remodeling
her constitution. There were no common schools, and the mass of the people
were more ignorant and rough than their contemporaries in any other
colony. Elections were scenes of bribery, intimidation, and riot,
surpassing even those which Hogarth depicted in England. Elkanah Watson,
of Massachusetts, describes what he saw at Hanover Court House, Patrick
Henry's county, in 1778: "The whole county was assembled. The moment I
alighted, a wretched, pug-nosed fellow assailed me to swap watches. I had
hardly shaken him off, when I was attacked by a wild Irishman who insisted
on my swapping horses with him.... With him I came near being involved in
a boxing-match, the Irishman swearing, I 'did not trate him like a
jintleman.' I had hardly escaped this dilemma when my attention was
attracted by a fight between two very unwieldy fat men, foaming and
puffing like two furies, until one succeeded in twisting a forefinger in a
sidelock of the other's hair, and in the act of thrusting by this purchase
his thumb into the latter's eye, he bawled out, 'King's Cruise,'
equivalent in technical language to 'Enough.'"

Quakers were put in the pillory, scolding women were ducked, and it is
said that a woman was burned to death in Princess Anne County for
witchcraft. The English church, as we have seen, was an established
church; and all taxpayers, dissenters as well as churchmen, were compelled
to contribute to its support. Baptist preachers were arrested, and fined
as disturbers of the peace. The law of entail, both as respects land and
slaves, was so strict that their descent to the eldest son could not be
prevented even by agreement between the owner and his heir.

In his reformation of the laws, Jefferson was supported by Patrick Henry,
now governor, and inhabiting what was still called the palace; by George
Mason, a patriotic lawyer who drew the famous Virginia Bill of Rights; by
George Wythe, his old preceptor, and by James Madison, Jefferson's friend,
pupil, and successor, who in this year began his political career as a
member of the House of Burgesses.

Opposed to them were the conservative party led by R. C. Nicholas, head of
the Virginia bar, a stanch churchman and gentleman of the old school, and
Edward Pendleton, whom Jefferson described as "full of resource, never
vanquished; for if he lost the main battle he returned upon you, and
regained so much of it as to make it