ur
house has not furnished chairmen for two of your standing
committees[395:A] who can spell English or write common sense,
as the grievances under their own handwriting will manifest.
And to keep such an assembly on foot would be the discrediting
a country that has many able and worthy gentlemen in it. And
therefore I now dissolve you."

These proceedings throw light on the practical working of the colonial
government, of the vigorous and haughty spirit of Spotswood, who was not
surpassed in ability or in character by any of the colonial governors,
and of the liberty-loving but factious house of burgesses. They also
exhibit the critical condition of South Carolina, and the imminent
danger of Virginia at that period. On this last point Chalmers fell into
an error, in stating that the Indians then had ceased to be objects of
dread in Virginia.

The assembly, as has been seen, expelled two burgesses for serving
without compensation, which they stigmatized as tantamount to
bribery--thus seeming indirectly to charge bribery upon the members of
the British house of commons, who receive no per diem compensation.
After five weeks spent in fruitless altercations, Spotswood, conceiving
the assembly to be actuated by factious motives, dissolved them with
harsh and contemptuous expressions, offending the spirit of the
burgesses. He had previously wounded the pride of the council, long the
oligarchy of the Old Dominion, when "colonel, and member of his
majesty's council of Virginia," was a sort of provincial title of
nobility. Frequent anonymous letters were now transmitted to England,
inveighing against Spotswood. While the board of trade commended his
general conduct, they reproved him for the offensive language which he
had used in his speech to the burgesses, "who, though mean, ignorant
people, and did not comply with his desires, ought not to have been
irritated by sharp expressions, which may not only incense them, but
even their electors." In other points, Spotswood vindicated himself with
vigor and success, and he insisted "that some men are always
dissatisfied, like the tories, if they are not allowed to govern; men
who look upon every one not born in the country as a foreigner."

When, in 1717, the ancient laws of the colony were revised, the acts of
1663, for preventing the recovery of foreign debts, and prohibiting the
assemblage of Quakers, and that of 1676, (one of Bacon's laws,)
excl