increasing size of the House of Burgesses.
The executive powers entrusted to the Council were also of very great importance. The Governor was compelled by his instructions to secure its assistance and consent in the most important matters. And since the chief executive was always a native of England, and often entirely ignorant of conditions in the colony, he was constantly forced to rely upon the advice of his Council. This tendency was made more pronounced by the frequent changes of Governors that marked the last quarter of the seventeenth century. So habitually did the Council exercise certain functions, not legally within their jurisdiction, that they began to claim them as theirs by right. And the Governor was compelled to respect these claims as scrupulously as the King of England respects the conventions that hedge in and limit his authority.
Before the end of the seventeenth century the Council had acquired extraordinary influence in the government. With the right to initiate and to block legislation, with almost complete control over the judiciary, with great influence in administrative matters, it threatened to become an oligarchy of almost unlimited power.
But it must not be supposed that the influence of the Council rendered impotent the King's Governor. Great powers were lodged in the hands of this officer by his various instructions and commissions. He was commander of the militia, was the head of the colonial church, he appointed most of the officers, attended to foreign affairs, and put the laws into execution. His influence, however, resulted chiefly from the fact that he was the representative of the King. In the days of Charles I, in the Restoration Period and under James II, when the Stuarts were combating liberal institutions, both in England and in the colonies, the Governor exercised a powerful and dangerous control over affairs in Virginia. But after the English Revolution his power declined. As the people of England no longer dreaded a monarch whose authority now rested solely upon acts of Parliament, so the Virginians ceased to fear his viceroy.
The powers officially vested in the Governor were by no means solely executive. He frequently made recommendations to the Assembly, either in his own name or the name of the King, and these recommendations at times assumed the nature of commands. If the Burgesses were reluctant to obey, he had numerous weapons at hand with which to intimidate them and whip them into line. Unscrupulous use of the patronage and threats of the King's dire displeasure were frequently resorted to. The Governor presided over the upper house, and voted there as any other member. Moreover, he could veto all bills, even those upon which he had voted in the affirmative in the Council. Thus he had a large influence in shaping the laws of the colony, and an absolute power to block all legislation.
Such, in outline, was the government originated for Virginia by the liberal leaders of the London Company, and put into operation by Sir George Yeardley. It lasted, with the short intermission of the Commonwealth Period, for more than one hundred and fifty years, and under it Virginia became the most populous and wealthy of the English colonies in America.
The successful cultivation of tobacco in Virginia, as we have seen, put new life into the discouraged London Company. The shareholders, feeling that now at last the colony would grow and prosper, exerted themselves to the utmost to secure desirable settlers and to equip them properly. Soon fleets of considerable size were leaving the English ports for America, their decks and cabins crowded with emigrants and their holds laden with clothing, arms and farming implements.[150] During the months from March 1620 to March 1621 ten ships sailed, carrying no less than 1051 persons.[151] In the year ending March, 1622, seventeen ships reached Virginia, bringing over fifteen hundred new settlers.[152] And this stream continued without abatement until 1624, when disasters in Virginia, quarrels among the shareholders and the hostility of the King brought discouragement to the Company. In all, there reached the colony from November, 1619, to February, 1625, nearly five thousand men, women and children.[153]
Although tobacco culture was the only enterprise of the colony which had yielded a profit, it was not the design of Sandys and his friends that that plant should monopolize the energies of the settlers. They hoped to make Virginia an industrial community, capable of furnishing the mother country with various manufactured articles, then imported from foreign countries. Especially anxious were they to render England independent in their supply of pig iron. Ore having been discovered a few miles above Henrico on the James, a furnace was erected there and more than a hundred skilled workmen brought over from England to put it into operation. Before the works could be completed, however, they were utterly demolished by the savages, the machinery thrown into the river, all the workmen slaughtered,[154] and the only return the Company obtained for an outlay of thousands of pounds was a shovel, a pair of tongs and one bar of iron.[155] Efforts were made later to repair the havoc wrought by the Indians and to reëstablish the works, but they came to nothing. Not until the time of Governor Spotswood were iron furnaces operated in Virginia, and even then the industry met with a scant measure of success.
The Company also made an earnest effort to promote the manufacture of glass in Virginia. This industry was threatened with extinction in England as a result of the great inroads that had been made upon the timber available for fuel, and it was thought that Virginia, with its inexhaustible forests, offered an excellent opportunity for its rehabilitation. But here too they were disappointed. The sand of Virginia proved unsuitable for the manufacture of glass. The skilled Italian artisans sent over to put the works into operation were intractable and mutinous. After trying in various ways to discourage the enterprise, so that they could return to Europe, these men brought matters to a close by cracking the furnace with a crowbar. George Sandys, in anger, declared "that a more damned crew hell never vomited".[156]
In order to show that they were sincere in their professions of interest in the spiritual welfare of the Indians, the Company determined to erect a college at Henrico "for the training up of the children of those Infidels in true Religion, moral virtue and civility".[157] The clergy of England were enthusiastic in their support of this good design, and their efforts resulted in liberal contributions from various parts of the kingdom.[158] Unfortunately, however, the money thus secured was expended in sending to the college lands a number of "tenants" the income from whose labor was to be utilized in establishing and supporting the institution.[159] As some of these settlers fell victims to disease and many others were destroyed in the massacre of 1622, the undertaking had to be abandoned, and of course all thought of converting and civilizing the savages was given up during the long and relentless war that ensued.
Even more discouraging than these failures was the hostility of the King to the cultivation of tobacco in Virginia, and his restrictions upon its importation into England. Appeals were made to him to prohibit the sale of Spanish tobacco, in order that the Virginia planters might dispose of their product at a greater profit. This, it was argued, would be the most effective way of rendering the colony prosperous and self sustaining. But James, who was still bent upon maintaining his Spanish policy, would not offend Philip by excluding his tobacco from England. Moreover, in 1621, he issued a proclamation restricting the importation of the leaf from Virginia and the Somers Isles to fifty-five thousand pounds annually.[160] This measure created consternation in Virginia and in the London Company. The great damage it would cause to the colony and the diminution in the royal revenue that would result were pointed out to James, but for the time he was obdurate.[161] Indeed, he caused additional distress by granting the customs upon tobacco to a small association of farmers of the revenue, who greatly damaged the interests of the colony. In 1622, James, realizing that his policy in regard to tobacco was injuring the exchequer, made a compromise with the Company. The King agreed to restrict the importation of Spanish tobacco to 60,000 pounds a year, and after two years to exclude it entirely. All the Virginia leaf was to be admitted, but the Crown was to receive one third of the crop, while the other two thirds was subjected to a duty of six pence a pound.[162] This agreement proved most injurious to the Company, and it was soon abandoned, but the heavy exactions of the King continued. Undoubtedly this unwise policy was most detrimental to Virginia. Not only did it diminish the returns of the Company and make it impossible for Sandys to perfect all his wise
