agating themselves throughout the United States,
are the two lines that have led through New England on the one hand
and through Virginia on the other. We have seen what shape local
government assumed in New England; let us now observe what shape it
assumed in the Old Dominion.

[Sidenote: Virginia sparsely settled.]
The first point to be noticed in the early settlement of Virginia is
that people did not live so near together as in New England. This was
because tobacco, cultivated on large estates, was a source of wealth.
Tobacco drew settlers to Virginia as in later days gold drew settlers
to California and sparsely Australia. They came not in organized
groups or congregations, but as a multitude of individuals. Land
was granted to individuals, and sometimes these grants were of
enormous extent. John Bolling, who died in 1757, left an estate of
40,000 acres, and this is not mentioned as an extraordinary amount of
land for one man to own.[7] From an early period it was customary
to keep these great estates together by entailing them, and this
continued until entails were abolished in 1776 through the influence
of Thomas Jefferson.

[Footnote 7: Edward Channing, "Town and County Government," in
_Johns Hopkins University Studies_, vol. ii. p. 467.]

[Sidenote: Absence of towns.]
A glance at the map of Virginia shows to what a remarkable degree it
is intersected by navigable rivers. This fact made it possible for
plantations, even at a long distance from the coast, to have each its
own private wharf, where a ship from England could unload its cargo of
tools, cloth, or furniture, and receive a cargo of tobacco in return.
As the planters were thus supplied with most of the necessaries of
life, there was no occasion for the kind of trade that builds up
towns. Even in comparatively recent times the development of town life
in Virginia has been very slow. In 1880, out of 246 cities and towns
in the United States with a population exceeding 10,000, there were
only six in Virginia.

[Sidenote: Slavery]
The cultivation of tobacco upon large estates caused a great demand for
cheap labour, and this was supplied partly by bringing negro slaves from
Africa, partly by bringing criminals from English jails. The latter were
sold into slavery for a limited term of years, and were known as
"indentured white servants." So great was the demand for labour that it
became customary to kidnap poor friendless wretches on the streets of
sea