James I. attempted to suppress their Charters by seizing
them, but the records show that laws continued to be passed
by the Governor and Council and the people of Virginia in
Assembly. And in 1628 they extorted their Charters again
from the reluctant hand of Charles 1.
    The origin of the Republican idea in Virginia has been
dlated by those ignorant of Virginia's history from the Stamp
Act in 1765; by others not quite so ignorant, from Bacon's Re-
bellion in 1676; while yet others have dated it from the Session
of the First Assembly in 1619. But the seed had been sown,
and the plan had been growing, though with many a let and
hindrance since the first experience of the Colonists and of the
managers of the enterprise in England under "the King's
faction-producing form of Government."
    The popular Charters of 1609 and 1612, which sprang from
the sentiment for a freer Government, themselves opened the
way for the development of liberal ideas of government in the
New Country. From the time that the Representatives of the
people first sat on Virginia soil, there was never, as we look
back on it now; any real danger that the people would not
achieve their liberties. The object of Sir Edwin Sandys, when
drafting the popular Charters, was to found a free popular
State here. It was this idea, and the known realization of it,
which brought the Mayflower and her ship 's company of
Liberty-seekers to the shores of Northern Virginia in 1620, as
it had brought so many ship-loads to Virginia.
    In 1624 the Virginia Assembly passed a law providing that
no taxes should be levied in Virginia but by and with the con-
sent of the Virginia Assembly. And this was the very ground
on which one hundred and fifty years later the American Revo-
lution was based. From this time, during this one hundred
and fifty years, the continual assertion of this right was the
product of the Virginia Colony and its civilization; for whether
it was asserted in Virginia or in New England, it was based on
the principle thus first enunciated and asserted by the Virginia
Colony.



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