ensive a manner as they enjoyed them before the
recalling of the company's patent." Moreover, Charles the First, in
1644, assured the Virginians that they should always be immediately
dependent upon the crown. After the king's death Virginia displayed her
loyalty by resisting the parliamentary forces sent out to reduce the
colony, and by exacting the most honorable terms of surrender. Here the
author of "the Inquiry," although exceedingly well informed in general
as to the history of the colony, falls into the common error that
Charles the Second was proclaimed in Virginia some time before he was
restored to the throne in England.

Thus Virginia was, as to her internal affairs, a distinct, independent
state, but united with the parent state by the closest league and amity,
and under the same allegiance. If the crown had indeed no prerogative to
form such a compact, then the royal engagements wherein "the freedom and
other benefits of the British constitution" were secured to them, could
not be made good: and a people who are liable to taxation without
representation, cannot be held to enjoy "the freedom and benefits of the
British constitution." Even in the arbitrary reign of Charles the First,
when it was thought necessary to establish a permanent revenue for the
support of the government in Virginia, the king did not apply to the
British parliament, but to the assembly of Virginia, and sent over an
act under the great seal, by which it was enacted, "By the king's most
excellent majesty, by and with the consent of the general assembly,"
etc. After the restoration, indeed, the colonies lost the freedom of
trade which they had before enjoyed, and the navigation act of 25th
Charles the Second not only circumscribed the trade of the colonies with
foreign nations within very narrow limits, but imposed duties on goods
manufactured in the colonies and exported from one to another. The right
to impose these duties was disputed by Virginia; and her agents, in
April, 1676, procured from Charles the Second a declaration, under his
privy seal, that "taxes ought not to be laid upon the inhabitants and
proprietors of the colony but by the common consent of the general
assembly, except such impositions as the parliament should lay on the
commodities imported into England from the colony." But if no protest
had been made against the navigation act, that forbearance could in no
way justify an additional act of injustice. If the people o