itia--Forts--
Indians--Boundary--Commodities--Population--Health--Trade--
Restrictions on it--Governor's Salary--Quit-rents--Parishes--
Free Schools, and Printing.

THE lords commissioners of foreign plantations, in 1670, were Arlington,
Ashley, Richard George W. Alington, T. Clifford, S. Trevor, Orlando
Bridgeman, C. S. Sandwich, president, Thomas Grey, ---- Titus, A.
Broucher, H. Slingsby, secretary, Hum. Winch, and Edmund Waller. These,
during this year, propounded inquiries to Sir William Berkley, governor,
respecting the state and condition of Virginia; and his answers made in
the year following present a satisfactory statistical account of the
colony. The executive consisted of a governor and sixteen councillors,
commissioned by the king, to determine all causes above fifteen pounds;
causes of less amount were tried by county courts, of which there were
twenty. The assembly met every year, composed of two burgesses from each
county. Appeals lay to the assembly; and this body levied the taxes.
(This power was delegated for some years to the executive.) The
legislative and executive powers rested in the governor, council,
assembly, and subordinate officers. The secretary of the colony sent the
acts of the assembly to the lord chancellor, or one of the principal
secretaries of state. All freemen were bound to muster monthly in their
own counties; the force of the colony amounted to upwards of eight
thousand horsemen. There were five forts: two on the James, and one on
each of the three rivers, Rappahannock, York, and Potomac; the number of
cannon was thirty. His majesty, during the late Dutch war, had sent over
thirty more, but the most of them were lost at sea. The Indians were in
perfect subjection. The eastern boundary of Virginia, on the sea-coast,
had been reduced from ten degrees to half of one degree. Tobacco was
the only commodity of any great value; exotic mulberry-trees had been
planted, and attempts made to manufacture silk. There was plenty of
timber; of iron ore but little discovered. The whole population was
forty thousand; of which two thousand were negro slaves, and six
thousand white servants. (The negroes had increased one hundredfold in
fifty years, since 1619, when the first were imported.) The average
annual importation of servants was about fifteen hundred; most of them
English, a few Scotch, fewer Irish; and not more than two or three ships
with negroes in seven years. New plan