ce was
useless, every thought was of appeasement. A series of reform laws,
which struck at the very roots of Berkeley's system of rule through
placemen, was introduced in the Assembly, rushed through, and signed by
the governor.

Not knowing what had happened during his absence, on his arrival Bacon
mounted the steps to the Long Room of the State House where the Assembly
met, to urge them to right the people's wrongs. Thomas Mathews, who was
present, says that "he pressed hard, nigh an hour's harangue on
preserving our lives from the Indians, inspecting the revenues, the
exorbitant taxes, and redressing the grievances and calamities of that
deplorable country." It was only when he had finished that someone spoke
up to tell him that "they had already redressed their grievances." To
contend that Bacon was not interested in laws which he himself had so
passionately urged and which had obviously been passed to conciliate him
and his followers is merely to attempt to disprove the obvious.

Philip A. Bruce, in a statement published in 1893, in the _Virginia
Magazine of History and Biography_, points out that Bacon's Rebellion
"preceded the American Revolution by a century, an event which it
resembled in its spirit, if not in its causes and results. Bacon is
known in history as the Rebel, but the fuller information which we have
now as to the motives of his conduct shows that he can with more justice
be described as Bacon the Patriot. He headed a powerful popular movement
in which the sovereignty of the people was for the first time relied
upon on American soil by a great leader as the justification of his
acts. The spirit breathing through the Declaration of the People is the
spirit of the Declaration of Independence." Nothing which has been
brought out in the sixty-four years since Dr. Bruce wrote these words
has shaken or can shake their truth. Bacon was the torchbearer of the
Revolution.

Attempts to defend Sir John Harvey are as unconvincing as those to
belittle Bacon. Certainly the Sackville Papers, recently made available
to historians, contain nothing to warrant any change in the conclusion,
long accepted by Virginia historians, that Harvey's expulsion was richly
deserved.

Charles Campbell, in his _History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of
Virginia_, thus describes Harvey's administration: "He was extortionate,
proud, unjust, and arbitrary; he issued proclamations in derogation of
the legislative powers of th