this could have to
do with him. After a moment, Hugh Price resumed:

"The freemen of Virginia number more than eight thousand horse, and are
bound to muster monthly in every county, to be ready for the Indians;
but the Indians are absolutely subjugated, so there need be no fear of
them. There are five forts in Virginia, mounted with thirty cannon, two
on James River, and one each on the other three rivers of York,
Rappahannock, and Potomac; but we have neither skill nor ability to
maintain them. We have a large foreign commerce. Nearly eighty ships
every year come out from England and Ireland, and a few ketches from New
England, in defiance of the navigation laws, which the people of New
England seem more willing to break than are the people of Virginia. We
build neither small nor great vessels here, for we are most obedient to
all laws, whilst the New England men break them with impunity and trade
at any place to which their interests lead them."

"The New England people are prosperous and God-fearing," Robert ventured
to put in.

"Yea; but do they not harbor outlaws and regicides. Do not Whalley and
Goffe find in that country aiders and abettors in their criminal
proceeding?"

"The New Englanders are friendly to the education of the masses."

At this, Hugh Price for an instant lost control of his passion. His
master, Sir William Berkeley, in a memorial to parliament, had
just said:

"I thank God that there are no free schools, nor printing, and I hope we
shall not have them these hundred years; for learning has brought
disobedience into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels
against the best governments. God keep us from both!"

Virginia was the last province to submit to the commonwealth and first
to declare for the returned monarch, and the royalists residing in
Virginia despised what the common people insisted in calling freedom.
The commonwealth had driven many excellent royalists from England to
Virginia, and while Hugh Price seeks to smother his anger in clouds of
tobacco smoke, we will make a quotation from John Esten Cooke's
"Virginia" in regard to some of them:

"The character of the king's men who came over during the commonwealth
period has been a subject of much discussion. They have been called even
by Virginia writers as we have seen, 'butterflies of aristocracy,' who
had no influence in affairs or in giving its coloring to Virginia
society. The facts entirely contradict the view