t, and virtually alone in the honest desire to
found a permanent settlement in Virginia for ends he thus sets forth:

"Erecting towns, peopling countries, informing the ignorant, reforming
things unjust, teaching virtue and gain to our native Mother Country."

There is a prophetic ring in this remarkable utterance of one whom his
contemporaries persisted in regarding as a reckless adventurer,
ambitious and unscrupulous. His frank denunciation of the feeble
measures of Wingfield and the selfish villainy of Ratcliffe, another
colleague, had earned the ill-will of the president and the relentless
hatred of Ratcliffe. Smith, being under arrest, was not allowed to take
his place among the councillors. He bided the day of justice with
patience learned from adversity. When the supreme opportunity came he
grasped it. An attack from hostile Indians proved Wingfield's unfitness
for the military command, and the alarmed colonists turned instinctively
to the bravest of their number. Wingfield anticipated the uprising by
reiterating his intention of sending Smith to England for trial, for the
double crime of mutiny and treason.

"The restive soldier suddenly flamed out. He would be tried in Virginia
as was his right--there was the charter! and the trial took place. The
result was a ruinous commentary on the characters of Wingfield and the
council. The testimony of their own witnesses convicted them of
subornation of perjury to destroy Smith. He was acquitted by the jury of
all the charges against him, and Kendall, who had conducted the
prosecution, was condemned to pay him L200 damages. This sum was
presented by Smith to the colony for the general use, and then the foes
partook of the commission, and the soldier was admitted to his seat in
the council." (Cooke's "History of Virginia.")

By autumn the settlement was fearfully reduced in numbers and spirits.
Fever, engendered by marshland malaria and famine, threatened utter
extinction.

"From May to September, those who escaped lived upon sturgeon and
sea-crabs; 50 in this time were buried," writes one of the sufferers.
"The rest, seeing the president's projects to escape these miseries in
our pinnace by flight (who all this time had neither felt want or
sickness), so moved our dead spirits as we deposed him and established
Ratcliffe in his place."

It was an exchange of inefficiency for deliberate wickedness, and in the
excess of continued misery the more reasonable of the vic