atic spirit of the frontier with the
aristocratic temper of an older civilization. The unit of social
organization was the plantation, which naturally tended to become, and
in the case of the larger plantations often became in fact, relatively
complete and self-sufficing--a little world in itself. The planter,
surrounded by his family and his servants and cut off from intimate or
frequent contact with his neighbors, producing, for the most part in
abundance, all the necessities and many of the luxuries of life, was
master of his _entourage_ and but little dependent upon the outside
world. Inevitably the conditions of plantation life developed the
aristocratic spirit, the sense of mastery and independence which comes
from directing inferiors in an isolated and self-sufficing enterprise.

Influences of environment were strengthened by the traditions which the
settlers had inherited. Neither planter nor servant came to America with
utopian ideals of society or government. It was discontent not dissent
that drove them out. Dissatisfied with their position in the English
social system, they were yet well content with the system itself; a
system which they were willing enough to establish in the New World in
the hope of obtaining in it a more desirable position for themselves.
And so it happened that the laborer and the farmer, the small landowner
and the master of a great estate, the clergyman and the high official,
were disposed to take as a matter of course the position which custom
assigned them, and in that position to exercise the authority and render
the obedience which was proper to it.

Tradition and environment thus conspired to establish a government in
which initiative and leadership fell to the great planters, while the
mass of the freemen exercised a restrained and limited supervision. It
was a happy accident, rather than any strong popular demand, that gave
to Virginia an elected chamber. Sir Edwin Sandys and the Earl of
Southampton, who gained control of the Virginia Company in 1618, hoped
to put the enterprise on a paying basis by lavish land grants and
liberal concessions in respect to religious and political liberty.
Governor Yeardley was accordingly sent out in 1619 with instructions to
call together "two Burgesses from each Plantation, freely to be elected
by the inhabitants thereof." In June of the same year twenty-two
burgesses, representing eleven districts, together with the governor and
council, ass