descendants here with a faithful and steady devotion, and the sacred flame, kept alive by the recollections of the past as well as the hopes of the future, will yet, we may trust, light the world to freedom through the paths of peace.

Virginians especially must ever warmly remember that it was to the zealous patronage and spirited protection of the band of patriots, who were at this time struggling for the ancient liberties of England, that the early colonists of our own state were indebted for the vindication and establishment of their franchises. It was mainly through the generous exertions of one among that noble band, whose name I have already mentioned, Sir Edwin Sandys, (who was for a time Treasurer to the Virginia company in England, and always the gallant and faithful friend of the colony,) that it was rescued from the brutal tyranny of Argall and placed under the safeguard of a representative assembly of its own choice. The questions of liberty, in the affairs of the colony and in the administration of the government in England, indeed, became so intimately blended that the meetings of the Virginia Company, numbering among its members some of the most distinguished public men of the day, became a forum in which the political principles of the two adverse parties were freely and openly debated; and the Spanish minister, Gondomar, advised King James to annul the charter of the company, because its meetings were, as he said, "but a seminary to a seditious parliament."

No sooner had James the First succeeded to the Crown of England, than it became apparent that a

great and deadly struggle between the claims of royal prerogative on the one hand and the new-born and sturdy spirit of popular independence on the other, was imminent and inevitable. In the Proclamation he issued on ascending the throne, he announced his favourite dogmas of the divine and indefeasible right of Kings, and the duty of subjects to render absolute and implicit obedience, in terms the most unmitigated and revolting. Incidents occurred on his journey from Edinburgh to London, in the very honey-moon of his English Royalty, which sufficiently evinced that these extravagant pretensions were not the mere idle and absurd pedantry of his boasted King-craft, as too many historians have been wont to represent them. A poor wretch who had been detected in some petit larceny, he ordered to be hanged without any form of trial-ten of the Reverend Clergy who presented to him the Millenary Petition, so called from the thousand ministers who were said to have signed it, were committed to prison by his command for a modest and respectful exercise of the humblest right of the subject and the crowds of persons of every rank, who were drawn together by loyalty and curiosity, to greet the arrival of their new sovereign, were rudely repelled and dispersed by a Proclamation forbidding "this resort of people." This début of the King, it must be admitted, was a most unpromising, as well as ungracious, beginning of a new reign.

It was not long, however, before his innate hostility to the liberties of the people was demonstrated by acts of a more dangerous and wide reaching character. A Parliament was to be assembled. In the proclama

tion of the King summoning this assembly, he authoritatively prescribed to the people the sort of persons they should choose for their Representatives, and declared that if any person should presume to take upon him the place of Knight, Citizen or Burgess, contrary to the purport and effect of that proclamation, every such person should be fined and imprisoned for his offence. This bold interference with the freedom of elections, the most delicate as well as fundamental privilege of the nation, was followed in a few days by a daring attack upon the vital principle of Parliament as an independent representative body. One of the King's privy counsellors had been a candidate for the county of Buckingham, which, nevertheless, preferred and returned for its representative Sir Francis Goodwin, a person of more congenial popular sympathies and principles. The Lord Chancellor, the King's chief officer and keeper of his conscience, disregarding the inherent right of every Representative Body to be the sole judge of the returns and qualifications of its members, undertook to vacate the election of Sir Francis Goodwin, as being contrary to the late Proclamation of the King, and issued a writ for a new election, upon which the court candidate was returned. Immediately after the meeting of Parliament, this matter was brought up for the consideration of the House of Commons, who, after a debate characterised by high resolve and that noble spirit of liberty which then prevailed, reversed the proceedings of the chancellor as an infringement upon the fundamental privileges and rights of the Commons, and

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determined that Sir Francis Goodwin was lawfully entitled to his seat.

A long and vehement controversy ensued with the King, in the course of which he ordered the Commons to hold a conference with the Judges, which he said he commanded as an absolute King, and plainly told them that all their privileges were derived from his grant, and consequently, as he would have them to understand, revocable at his pleasure. The contest was conducted with great judgment and temper, as well as decision on the part of the Commons, and ended by placing their exclusive right to judge of the elections and returns of their members on a ground, where it has never since been questioned or assailed. It is not a little remarkable that it was in the person of a Representative of Buckinghamshire that was committed the first of that long series of violations of the public liberty which so fatally distinguished the rule of the two first Stuarts, and which it was reserved for another representative of the same great county at a later period-for the virtues and talents of Hampden-to redress in their increasing and cumulative enormity.

In tracing the progress of this great contest for liberty in the land of our ancestors, we come now to that vital struggle, in regard to the constitutional power of taxation, which gave birth alike to American and to British freedom. The people of England claimed it as a part of their ancient liberties not to be subject to any taxes or impositions upon their lands, goods or merchandise, save only by common consent

in Parliament. King James, unwilling to rely upon Parliament for supplies, which, in the now awakened jealousy of public liberty, were to be purchased only by the redress of grievances, resorted to various irregular expedients for the purpose of filling his Exchequer; and at length under colour of a decision obtained from servile and dependent Judges, he caused to be published of his own authority a Book of Rates imposing new and heavy duties upon all merchandise brought into the kingdom. As soon as Parliament was again assembled, the Commons entered upon an earnest examination of this alarming assumption of the power of taxation by the King, and after an elaborate and protracted debate, in which the learning and ability exhibited by some of the popular members were equalled only by the firm and undaunted spirit of patriotism displayed by them all, a bill was brought in to abolish the illegal impositions. The King, in an arrogant tone of despotic authority, commanded the Commons not to proceed with a question which touched his prerogative. The Commons, in a noble Remonstrance, vindicated their right freely to discuss all matters which concerned the interests of the nation; and pronouncing the prerogative of imposition, claimed by the King, to be one which "extended to the utter ruin of the ancient liberty of the kingdom and of the subjects' right of property in their lands and goods," proceeded, in despite of the royal prohibition, to pass the bill which had been brought in for the abolition of the new imposts. The Lords, as was to be anticipated, withheld their concurrence in this vigorous measure; and James, deeply offended at