enlisted in its favor precisely those passions of the multitude
which are the most selfish, the most blinding, and at the same time
the most energetic. It only needed an advocate skilful enough to play
effectively upon these passions, and a storm would be raised before
which mere considerations of law and of equity would be swept out of
sight.

In order to understand the real issue presented by "the Parsons'
Cause," and consequently the essential weakness of the side to the
service of which our young lawyer was now summoned, we shall need to
turn about and take a brief tour into the earlier history of Virginia.
In that colony, from the beginning, the Church of England was
established by law, and was supported, like any other institution of
the government, by revenues derived from taxation,--taxation levied in
this case upon nearly all persons in the colony above the age of
sixteen years. Moreover, those local subdivisions which, in the
Northern colonies, were called towns, in Virginia were called
parishes; and accordingly, in the latter, the usual local officers who
manage the public business for each civil neighborhood were called,
not selectmen or supervisors, as at the North, but vestrymen. Among
the functions conferred by the law upon these local officers in
Virginia was that of hiring the rector or minister, and of paying him
his salary; and the same authority which gave to the vestry this power
fixed likewise the precise amount of salary which they were to pay.
Ever since the early days of the colony, this amount had been stated,
not in money, which hardly existed there, but in tobacco, which was
the staple of the colony. Sometimes the market value of tobacco would
be very low,--so low that the portion paid to the minister would yield
a sum quite insufficient for his support; and on such occasions, prior
to 1692, the parishes had often kindly made up for such depreciation
by voluntarily paying an extra quantity of tobacco.[33] After 1692,
however, for reasons which need not now be detailed, this generous
custom seems to have disappeared. For example, from 1709 to 1714, the
price of tobacco was so low as to make its shipment to England, in
many instances, a positive loss to its owner; while the sale of it on
the spot was so disadvantageous as to reduce the minister's salary to
about L25 a year, as reckoned in the depreciated paper currency of the
colony. Of course, during those years, the distress of the clergy wa