to the sparseness of the population, was most of all
bewailed by parents. The children of Virginia, naturally of beautiful
persons, and generally of more genius than those in England, were doomed
to grow up unserviceable for any great employments in church or state.
As a principal remedy for these ills, the establishment of towns in each
county was recommended. It was further proposed to erect schools in the
colony, and for the supply of ministers to establish, by act of
parliament, Virginia fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge, with an
engagement to serve the church in Virginia for seven years. To raise the
funds necessary for this purpose, it was proposed to take up a
collection in the churches of Great Britain; and the assembly ordered a
petition to the king to that end, to be drawn up.[250:B] Another feature
of this plan was to send over a bishop, so soon as there should be a
city for his see. These recommendations, although urged upon the
attention of the bishop of London, seem, from whatever cause, to have
proved fruitless. The Virginia assembly, in no instance, expressed any
desire for the appointment of a bishop; they remembered with abhorrence
the cruelties that had been exercised by the prelates in England.

Mr. Jefferson remarked that the legislature of Virginia has frequently
declared that there should be towns in places where nature had declared
that they should not be. The scheme of compelling the planters to
abandon their plantations, and to congregate in towns, built by
legislation, was indeed chimerical. The failure of the schemes proposed
in the Virginia assembly for the establishment of towns, is attributed
by the author of "Virginia's Cure" to the majority of the house of
burgesses, who are said to have come over at first as servants, and who,
although they may have accumulated by their industry competent estates,
yet, owing to their mean education, were incompetent to judge of public
matters, either in church or state. Yet many of the early laws appear to
have been judicious, practical, and well adapted to the circumstances of
a newly settled country. The legislature, eventually finding the scheme
of establishing towns by legal enactments impracticable, declared it
expedient to leave trade to regulate itself.

The assembly of March, 1661, consisted in the main of new members. At
another session held in October of the same year, there appeared still
fewer of the members who had held seats during the