tune--without the least prospect of a return, it can not be viewed as
a very unaccountable caprice that he should get sick of the business,
and be glad to transfer it into other hands."--Murray, vol. i., p. 254.]

[Footnote 298: For an account of Sir Richard Greenville's death, see
Appendix, No. LX. (see Vol II)]

[Footnote 299: "The fundamental idea, of the older British colonial
policy appears to have been, that wherever a man went, he carried with
him the rights of an Englishman, whatever these were supposed to be. In
the reign of James I., the state doctrine was, that most popular rights
were usurpations; and the colonists of Virginia, sent out under the
protection of government, were therefore placed under that degree of
control which the state believed itself authorized to exercise at home.
The Puritans exalted civil franchise to a republican pitch: their
colonies were therefore republican; there was no such notion as that of
an intermediate state of tutelage or semi-liberty. Hence the entire
absence of solicitude on the part of the mother country to interfere
with the internal government of the colonies arose not altogether from
neglect, but partly from principle. This is remarkably proved by the
fact that representative government was seldom expressly granted in the
early charters; _it was assumed by the colonists as a matter of right_.
Thus, to use the odd expression of the historian of Massachusetts, 'A
house of burgesses broke out in Virginia,' in 1619,[300] almost
immediately after its second settlement; and although the constitution
of James contained no such element, it was at once acceded to by the
mother country as a thing of course. No thought was ever seriously
entertained of supplying the colonies with the elements of an
aristocracy. Virginia was the only province of old foundation in which
the Church of England was established; and there it was abandoned, with
very little help, to the caprice or prejudices of the colonists, under
which it speedily decayed. The Puritans enjoyed, undisturbed, their
peculiar notions of ecclesiastical government. 'It concerned New England
always to remember that they were originally a plantation religious, not
a plantation of trade. And if any man among us make religion as twelve,
and the world as thirteen, such an one hath not the spirit of a true New
Englandman.' And when they chose to illustrate this noble principle by
decimating their own numbers by persecution, and