,--200 miles each way from Old Point
Comfort,--and extending "up into the land throughout _from sea to sea_,
west and northwest." This description is very important, for it was
afterwards claimed by Virginia to mean a grant of land of the shape
shown on the map.[1]

[Footnote 1: Read Hinsdale's _Old Northwest_, pp. 74, 75.]

[Illustration]

%22. The First Representative Assembly in America.%--Under the new
charter and new governors Virginia began to thrive. More work and less
grumbling were done, and a few wise reforms were introduced. One
governor, however, Argall, ruled the colony so badly that the people
turned against him and sent such reports to England that immigration
almost ceased. The company, in consequence, removed Argall, and gave
Virginia a better form of government. In future, the governor's power
was to be limited, and the people were to have a share in the making of
laws and the management of affairs. As the colonists, now numbering 4000
men, were living in eleven settlements, or "boroughs," it was ordered
that each borough should elect two men to sit in a legislature to be
called the House of Burgesses. This house, the first representative
assembly ever held by white men in America, met on July 30, 1619, in the
church at Jamestown, and there began "government of the people, by the
people, for the people."

%23. The Establishment of Slavery in America.%--It is interesting to
note that at the very time the men of Virginia thus planted free
representative government in America, another institution was planted
beside it, which, in the course of two hundred and fifty years, almost
destroyed free government. The Burgesses met in July, and a few weeks
later, on an August day, a Dutch ship entered the James and before it
sailed away sold twenty negroes into slavery. The slaves increased in
numbers (there were 2000 in Virginia in 1671), and slavery spread to the
other colonies as they were started, till, in time, it existed in every
one of them.

%24. Virginia loses her Charter, 1624.%--The establishment of popular
government in Virginia was looked on by King James as a direct affront,
and was one of many weighty reasons why he decided to destroy the
company. To do this, he accused it of mismanagement, brought a suit
against it, and in 1624 his judges declared the charter annulled, and
Virginia became a royal colony.[1]

[Footnote 1: On the Virginia colony in general read Doyle's volume on
_Virginia_, pp