University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER III

SELF-GOVERNMENT AND TAXATION REVIEWED

In the last chapter, the Virginia Assembly described their
right of "being governed by such laws respecting their internal
policy and taxation as are derived from their own consent,
with the approbation of their sovereign or his substitute,"
as a right which "as men and descendants of Britons,
they have ever quietly possessed since first by royal permission
and encouragement they left their Mother Kingdom to
extend its commerce and dominion."

This statement, though not true absolutely, was true approximately,
and for nearly all the Colonial period. During
the first twelve years under Sir Thomas Smythe, as Treasurer
of the London Company, the Colony had the aspect of a military
encampment governed by martial law, enforced with
great severity by the Presidents of the local Council and the
absolute governors, Gates, Delaware, Dale and Argall, who
succeeded them. But this severity was contrary to the spirit
of the charters of 1606, 1609 and 1612, which guaranteed to
the inhabitants "all the liberties, franchises and immunities
of English subjects."

After the expiration of this period, under the liberal management
of Sir Edwin Sandys and the Earl of Southampton,
the Colony entered on a free existence, and the London Company
in 1618, pursuant to the charter of 1612, which authorized
them "to ordain and make such laws and ordinances for
the good and welfare of the said plantation as to them shall
be thought requisite and meet, so as always the same be not
contrary to the laws and statutes of our realm of England,"

created a legislative body called the General Assembly, consisting
of Governor, Councillors, and representatives of the
people, and having "free power to treat, consult and conclude
as well of all emergent occasions concerning the public weal
of said colony and every part thereof, as also to make, ordain
and enact such general laws and orders, for the behoof of the
said colony, and the good government thereof, as shall from
time to time appear necessary or requisite." The election of
representatives at this time by the "inhabitants" was the
first expression of democracy on this continent, and the House
of Burgesses, because it represented the people, ultimately
became the ruling power in Virginia.

When the charter was revoked by King James in 1624,
there was for a short time a suspension of General Assemblies,
and the government was carried on by the governor and council
through proclamations that had the force of law, but in the
short period of four years the old order was restored, and the
General Assembly resumed its exercise of legislative authority.
Its jurisdiction covered the general field of legislation,
but like all Englishmen, the members were especially sensitive
as to any law involving a tax. So in 1624 they asserted for the
first time on the American continent the indissoluble connection
of representation and taxation. In that year the governor,
though representative of the King, was inhibited from
laying any taxes on the people without the consent of the
General Assembly, and this law was re-enacted twice afterwards,
in 1632 and 1642. In 1635, when Sir John Harvey refused
to send to England a petition against the King's proposed
monopoly of tobacco, which would have imposed an
arbitrary tax, the Assembly deposed him from the government
and sent him back to England, an act without precedent
in America. In 1652 when the people feared that Parliament
would deprive them of that liberty they had enjoyed under
King Charles I, they resisted, and would only submit when
the Parliamentary Commissioners signed a writing guaranteeing
to them all the rights of a self-governing dominion.

And when after the restoration of King Charles II, the
country was outraged by extensive grants of land to certain
court favorites, the agents of Virginia, in an effort to obtain
a charter to avoid these grants, made the finest argument in
1674 for the right of self-taxation to be found in the annals
of the 17th century. Even this early we find the agents insisting
"that neither his Majesty nor any of his ancestors or
predecessors had ever offered to impose any tax upon this
plantation without the consent of his subjects there."[32]

On this interesting occasion the suggestions of the Virginia
agents were accepted by the committee for foreign plantations,
and on their favorable report, King Charles II, on October 19,
1675, ordered a charter to be drawn up expressive of the understanding.
It made the colony dependent on the crown and
included special provisions for an Assembly having power to
enact laws and lay taxes.

But the delays were numerous, and Bacon's Rebellion
broke out in the interval. So, as a result, the charter was
stopped in the signet office, before it received the great seal,
and an instrument much reduced from the original purpose obtained
all the formalities and received the King's signature.
But this charter had the important feature, found in the
arrested charter and the old charters of 1606, 1609, 1612, of
making the colony dependent not on Parliament but solely on
the Crown. Nor did its failure to mention the legislature and
taxing power abrogate the pretensions of the colony in any
particular. This omission left the King's commitment in
council unaffected, and it did not impeach the powers of the
Legislature, for the omission was made up by King Charles
and his successors, who inserted the several clauses relating
to it, found in the arrested charter of 1676, in the commissions
issued from time to time to the Governors.

Democracy was at the bottom of Virginia's political life
and expressed itself in the House of Burgesses; and when
that House ceased to be representative, as it did during Sir

William Berkeley's administration, by being continued in existence
fourteen years, the people under the lead of Nathaniel
Bacon, Jr., who styled himself "General by consent of the
people," took the reins into their own hands and established a
government democratic in all particulars. The doctrine generally
accepted in other places that the colonists were bound
by those acts of Parliament in which that province was named,
and appeared, seems to have had little recognition in Virginia.

Parliamentary acts were often reenacted in Virginia by the
Virginia Assembly so as to give them the air of local authority.
Thus the Toleration Act of Parliament was sanctioned by the
colonial law as was the act establishing the Post Office in
America. Against this latter act, however, as Spotswood says,
"there was much murmuring among the people, who were
made to believe that Parliament could not levy any tax (for so
they called the rates of postage) here, without the consent of
the General Assembly."

When we consider the story of colonial Virginia as a whole
we find that the source of most of the troubles that make for
history was the existence of two authorities owning different
allegiances. The governors who had a negative on the laws,
used their influence in behalf of British interests, which were
often opposed to the interests of the colony. Hence there was
much wrangling over the prerogatives of the Crown and the
privileges and rights of the people. In these quarrels the
Council generally sided with the popular house, which was
very surprising to the authorities in England, who gave them
their commissions as councillors, and which was often very
unlike what happened in other colonies.

In illustration of this unfortunate antagonism was the
administration of Alexander Spotswood, a man of strong
convictions and patriotic views, but possessed of high notions
of his rights and prerogatives. He complained in 1713 that
the Assembly elected by the "mob of this country" would lay
no tax on the people "let the occasion be what it will," and
in 1715 he said that "such was their temper and understanding

(the Assembly) that they could not be reasoned into wholesome
laws and such was their humour and principles that they
would aim at no other acts than what invaded the prerogative
or thwarted the government."

Governors succeeding Spotswood learned to have more
discretion, and avoided carrying their pretentions so high,
and it is probable that Virginia for the remainder of the colonial
period saw more of peace and harmony than any of the
colonies. Out of the five royal governors that lived afterwards
in the palace at Williamsburg, Drysdale, Gooch, Dinwiddie,
Botetourt and Dunmore, three, Drysdale, Gooch and Botetourt
were as conciliatory as circumstances permitted, and even Dinwiddie
and Dunmore had really little of the old spirit of their
predecessors Harvey, Berkeley, Culpeper, Howard, Nicholson
and Spotswood. George Bancroft says in his history that it
would have been "ill for the American Revolution" in Massachusetts,
if instead of a Bernard or a Hutchinson, a man as
conciliatory as Botetourt had been sent to that colony.

The idea, however, of local supremacy, and legislative
control over the taxing power received several interesting vindications
in Virginia not long before the Stamp Act issue, as
developed in the last chapter.

While no one of these incidents in the life of Colonial Virginia
can be called the beginning of the American Revolution,
they were certainly the most important preludes to it.

When Robert Dinwiddie arrived as governor in the Colony,
1751, he brought information whose consideration consumed
much of the time of the first session of the Assembly convened
by the Governor on February 27. In 1745, a committee had
been appointed by the General Assembly to revise the laws of
the colony. The committee reported its work in the shape of
many bills to the Assembly of 1748, which spent one of the
longest sessions on record in considering and passing them.
The work, which was an arduous one, was completed in 1749,
and a copy sent on to the Board of Trade, but it was not till
some months after Dinwiddie's arrival, when the laws had been

in operation in Virginia for three years, that the king's official
action was communicated.

Then it was found that the King had disallowed ten of the
acts, and what was worse, he had affixed the royal signature to
the remaining fifty-seven. Now it was one of the standing
instructions to the governors that when a law finally received
the sanction of the King, it could not be repealed or amended
till the new act received an approval from the same authority,
for which reason it had become a custom to attach a clause
to such new act suspending its operation till it was approved
by his Majesty. It followed that it was greatly to the advantage
of the people here that the King's signature should be
withheld, since thus the laws might be altered quickly to suit
changes in conditions, arising in the course of events.

When laws were disallowed, they could not be re-enacted
except by special permission of the King given after full hearing
in Council.

Thus either kind of action, approval or disapproval, by the
King made for delay. It made for expense as well, for in these
days men in authority in England were not above the purchasing
power of money.

The announcement, which was made by proclamation April
10, 1752, created something like a panic in the Colony. The
Council and House acted promptly and appointed a joint committee
to consider what ought to be done. The most important
of the repealed acts was one for regulating the proceedings of
the General Court—the Supreme Court of the Colony. In
accordance with the recommendations of the Committee, a
bill was at once introduced to declare valid the proceedings of
the Court from the commencement to the repealing of the act.
This bill passed both houses the same day and was signed by
the Governor. On April 15, a strong representation to the
King was adopted by the two houses of the reasons for passing
the ten acts and of the inconvenience of the rule in reference
to acts finally ratified by the King, and begging a reversal of

his action.[33] Each house presented an address to Dinwiddie, as
governor for assistance in getting their representation properly
before the King, which he promised without hesitation
to do.

The effect of the Assembly's address was to cause his
Majesty to send instructions to Dinwiddie to give his assent
to two of the ten laws, and the matter is only important now
because it shows how contradictory were the relations between
the Mother Country and the Colony, and how even the King's
supervisory power was often a source of great embarrassment
to the country.

The behavior of Governor Dinwiddie in this affair was
very pleasing to the Assembly, and their gratitude found
expression in the naming of a county after him and at the close
of the session in a present of £500.

This harmony, however, did not continue. The next session
of the Assembly began November 1, 1753, and the question of
the pistole fee divided with the French the attention of the
Assembly.

According to a statement made by Colonel Richard Bland,
one of the leaders of the House, there were in the Secretary's
office, when Dinwiddie came to Virginia, nearly a thousand
patents made out and ready to be passed under the Colony
seal, and more than that number of surveyors certificates for
land for which patents should have been issued long before.
When those interested applied for their patents, they were told
that they must wait till the close of the session of Assembly.
After the Assembly adjourned the Governor made known the
fact that hereafter a pistole fee would be required before he
would attach his signature to a patent.

The order raised a storm, and feeling against the Governor
was very much inflamed by the fact that the order was not
given till the House had passed the resolution making him the
handsome gift referred to. The matter came regularly before
the present House on the petitions from freeholders of various

counties, including Dinwiddie County, the governor's recent
namesake.

The House took the view of the petitioners and regarded
the imposition as a tax and used this resolute language[34] in their
address to him on the subject: "The rights of the people are
so secured by law that they cannot be deprived of the least part
of their property but by their own consent." As these words
occur, word for word, in Bland's "A Modest and True State
of the Case," edited by Worthington C. Ford in his Virginia
Tracts, the address was clearly Bland's work. Bland in his
"True State" compared the pistole fee with the ship money
exacted by Charles I.

The passionate feeling of resentment experienced by the
Assembly is shown by their action in passing a resolution:
"That whoever shall hereafter pay a pistole as a fee to the
governor for the use of the seal to the patents for lands shall be
deemed a betrayer of the rights and privileges of the people."[35]

The contention of Dinwiddie was that he was acting in
obedience to his instructions and advice of the Council, that all
unoccupied land was the King's property; and that he was only
demanding a fee that was common in other colonies. This was
not at all satisfactory. No fee had been exacted in Virginia
except in Lord Culpeper's time, and this the King had on complaint
of the legislature promptly discontinued, so Dinwiddie
in breaking a custom of nearly an uninterrupted century's
standing was exceedingly unwise. Fundamentally speaking he
was wrong. The plain truth was that the king held the vacant
lands not for himself but in trust for the people of Virginia,
and the imposition of the pistole fee interfered with the
natural rights of the people to dispose of their own property.

The General Assembly appealed the case to England, and
sent over Peyton Randolph, the Attorney-General of Virginia,
as their attorney, and the dispute was heard before the Board
of Trade. Before this tribunal, Lord Worthington, representing

Virginia, insisted that the fee was essentially a tax, and
he demanded of Lord Mansfield, who acted for Dinwiddie, how
he could fix a real tax upon the people of Virginia without the
consent of the Legislature, and Mansfield returned no direct
reply. The Privy Council on hearing the argument on both
sides ordered a compromise, without reflecting, as Chalmers
says, that "every disputed right is relinquished by concession."
Dinwiddie was held right in principle, but he was commanded
to exact no fee for patents issued for less than 100
acres, or for any person imported, or on lands to the west of
the mountains, or on lands the preliminary steps for getting
patents had been taken before April 22, 1752, when Dinwiddie
issued his order. It was also declared that no patent should
issue for a larger body of lands than 1,000 acres, and that the
Attorney-General, Peyton Randolph, should be restored to the
office which Dinwiddie had declared vacant on his departure
for Europe, as agent for the Assembly.

The fact adverted to that the imposition of the Pistole fee
interfered with the natural right of the people to dispose of
their own property was the point in the controversy which
rose a year later over the Two Penny act—the third and most
important of the preludes to the opening of the Revolutionary
drama. It involved a principle identical with that involved
in the resistance to the Stamp Act.

Virginia had a State Church represented by about sixty
ministers, who were most of them Englishmen from the English
universities. Many causes have contributed to give them
a reputation in history which is by no means a just one. They
have suffered at the hands of travelers, who are given to generalizing
from a few special cases. They naturally opposed
the spread of dissent, and as a result were condemned by the
dissenters. Reformers, like Jarratt and Meade, have abused
them because such is the unconscious spirit of reform to see
little good in anything with which it disagrees. Finally, they
suffered from the patriotic writers, who, in spite of the demonstration
of the Virginia clergy in favor of the colony, when war

was at hand, never forgot their appeal to the power of the
crown at this time. Some of the ministers were, without doubt,
men of loose morality, but Rev. Andrew Burnaby, who spoke
discriminatingly, reported the majority to be of "sober and
exemplary lives." This did not mean that this majority did
not drink and play cards, for drinking and playing cards were
universally indulged in before the Revolution.

Probably all that Burnaby meant to say was that the Virginia
clergy would bear comparison with the English clergy,
of whom he was one, and were as a body superior in their
habits to the majority of the laity.

By an act passed in 1696, the salaries of the clergy were
settled at 16,000 pounds of tobacco. At that time that commodity
was rated 10s per hundred, which made their provision
eighty pounds sterling per annum. In the year 1748, when the
laws were revised, the act which established the salaries of
the clergy was re-enacted with some amendments. This act
being approved by the governor went immediately into effect
in Virginia, and was one of the fifty-seven acts which received
the royal approval in England and became, according to the
usual form of instructions to the governors, as already
explained, irrepealable except by an act of equal dignity, that
is, one having also the royal approval. In December, 1755, the
Assembly passed an act to remain in force for ten months,
allowing all tobacco dues to be paid at the option of the payer,
at sixteen shillings, eight pence for each hundred pounds of
tobacco. Because the price set was equal to two pence a pound,
the law was called the "Two Penny Act."

The act had no suspending clause for the King's approval,
but was to go into effect at once and the reason alleged in the
preamble for its passage was "a great drouth," which threatened
to reduce the tobacco crop, and make taxes too heavy in
this period of war.

The law was perfectly general in its application, but the
clergy was the only part of the community that complained.

After the passage of the bill through the House of Burgesses,

a fight against it was begun in the Council. In that body
Thomas Dawson, one of the professors in the College of William
and Mary and commissary to the Bishop of London, made
a strong speech against it, but in vain. After its passage
through the council, four of the clergy, also professors, John
Camm, William Preston, Thomas Robinson and Richard Graham,
called upon Governor Dinwiddie, and begged him to use
his veto. This gentleman, who had his whole heart and soul in
the French war, replied: "What can I do? If I refuse to
approve the act, I shall have the people on my back." He
promised, however, to refer the question to the Council for
advice, a step not calculated to help the cause of the clergy,
as that body had already approved the bill in their legislative
capacity. Now, as his official advisers, they counselled him to
sanction the bill, taking the ingenious ground that it did not
lessen the quantity of tobacco to be paid, but only explained
it by ascertaining the equivalent in money. After this advice
Dinwiddie approved the bill.

Then the local clergymen tried to get Commissary Dawson
to call a convention of the clergy, but he thought such a call
imprudent and advised them to ask the intervention of the
Bishop of London, who was their diocesan. This, some of the
clergy accordingly did, and Commissary Dawson wrote in their
behalf. But this was not entirely satisfactory, and the effort
was again made to get the Commissary, now elected president
of the College, to call a convention. When he refused to do
this, he was bitterly condemned by the four before mentioned
professors, and they joined with seven other ministers and
advertised in the Virginia Gazette for a clerical convention to
be held August 31, 1757, a course which greatly incensed Governor
Dinwiddie, who was condemned by them. But the two
pence per pound permitted by the Act, having by this time
turned out the average value of tobacco, only nine of the
brethren thought it worth while to attend the convention; and
these forebore to make any complaint. So the cloud at this
time broke, and the trouble in its acute stages passed away,

not failing, however, to leave behind a bitter crop of bad feelings,
which were manifested especially in the College circle.
On various charges the Board of Visitors, in 1757, removed
three of the professors, Camm, Robinson and Graham, and a
fourth, William Preston, escaped removal only by returning
to England. The College exercises were practically suspended
and many parents sent their children to the new College at
Philadelphia. Among the charges laid at the door of the Rev.
William Preston and the Rev. Thomas Robinson was the fact
of their marrying and "keeping contrary to all rules of seats
of learning, their wives, children and servants in the College,
which occasioned much confusion and disturbance."[36]

In June, 1758, Dinwiddie was superseded as governor by
Francis Fauquier, son of Dr. George Francis Fauquier. He
was generous and liberal in his manners, and as a fellow of the
Royal Society of England, he had a scholarly character and
fine literary taste. He was fond of science and delighted in
the society of such men as Dr. William Small, Professor of
Natural Philosophy in the College, and of George Wythe, celebrated
for his love of learning in classics, philosophy and law.
He left an impression of taste and refinement on the Colony
which eminently aided it in the leadership that for nearly a
century it was called upon to assume. Had it not been for his
passion for gambling, which spread a contagion through the
colony, he would have been nearly everything that could have
been wished for in a royal governor. On the question of
American rights, Fauquier was, as far as his situation would
admit, entirely on the popular side, the natural result of his
devotion to scientific studies which made him hostile to dogmas
of all kinds. In 1760, he expressed great apprehensions
to William Pitt that the colonists would not submit to any
Stamp Act.

Some months after his arrival, the General Assembly met
in October, 1758, and framed another Two Penny act to continue
for twelve months. Like the act of 1755, the new act did

not discriminate, and there was no clause suspending the
operation of the same until sanctioned by the Crown. The
clergy took action again, and a deputation consisting of the
Commissary, Rev. Thomas Dawson, and two eminent ministers,
Rev. John Camm and Rev. William Robinson, called upon
the Governor to get him to veto the measure, but Fauquier was
even more unsatisfactory than Dinwiddie. This is the account
of their interview as given by Mr. Robinson: "We humbly represented
to his Honor that the act which we were threatened
was contrary to reason and common justice. His answer was,
that was not a point to be considered. We then gently put him
in mind that it was contrary to his instructions. He answered
that is a point not to be considered. It was asked what was
the point to be considered, and he frankly told us the sole point
to be considered was what would please the people."[37] The
reason of the new act was "some unseasonable weather,"
made more serious by the fact of the war with the French.

The apprehension this time turned out correct, and the
scarcity of tobacco made the market price rise to six pence
per pound. The Clergy determined to appeal to the King and
a convention of thirty-five ministers assembled at the College.
They drew up a memorial and intrusted it to Rev. John Camm,
formerly Professor of Divinity in the College and minister of
Yorkhampton Parish, which was one of the parishes adjoining
Williamsburg, and lying in York County.

This action of the clergy put an entirely new phase upon the
question. The clergy were undoubtedly within their moral and
legal rights in opposing the bill as long as it could be reasonably
opposed in the colony, but an appeal to the King against
the colonists was to say the least very unwise, if not unjustifiable.
The clergy could not have been ignorant that the assertion
of the royal prerogative had provoked more than once the
deep resentment of the people for whom they ministered. Only
a few years before the Assembly had protested against this
very branch of prerogative that they now invoked, which made

an act once approved by the King irrepealable except with his
consent. But their action in appealing the strength of their
individual cause became lost in the much more important question
whether in a matter purely local, a matter indeed involving
a question of local taxation, any other will than that of the
Assembly should prevail.

Mr. Camm, the agent of the clergy, went to England in the
early part of 1759, and with the assistance of the Archbishop
of Canterbury obtained an interview with the King, to whom
he presented the clergy's petition. The King referred the
paper to his Privy Council, who on May 14, 1759, referred it
to the Board of Trade, and the latter thought it expedient to
ask the opinion of Dr. Thomas Sherlock, Bishop of London.
The Bishop's letter of reply[38] which is dated June 14, 1759,
fully sustained the memorial and denounced the Two Penny
Act as "unjust to the clergy, inconsistent with the dignity of
the Crown, and tending to draw the people of the plantations
from their allegiance." In this communication the Bishop
took notice of the great change which in the last few years had
ensued in the temper of the Virginians, and that what made the
change more serious was the evident disposition of the governor
and council to act in concert with them.

July 4, 1759, the Board of Trade reported to the King that
their opinion was that he should declare "his royal disallowance
of the acts of December, 1755, and October, 1758," which
was accordingly done in council on August 10 following. Mr.
Camm was elated and immediately wrote to his attorney in
Virginia to bring suit for his salary against the collectors of
Yorkhampton parish, but it was not without considerable loss
of time that he was furnished with a copy of the order and
additional instructions for Governor Fauquier. So after a
stay in England altogether of 18 months he set out on his
return to Virginia and arrived at Hampton on June 20, 1760,
where in order to refresh himself after the tedium of the sea

voyage he accepted a week's hospitalities from his friend, the
Rev. Thomas Warrington.

During the absence of Camm great excitement prevailed
in Virginia, and after his suit began in the General Court the
General Assembly on November 14, 1759, adopted a resolution
directing the Committee of Correspondence of Virginia to
instruct the agent of the General Assembly Edward Montague
(for Virginia had then two agents, one representing the General
Assembly and one representing the Council) to employ the
necessary counsel in any appeal to England relative to the Two
Penny Act. The letter of the Committee is dated December
12, 1759, and takes the ground that the act of 1758 was intended
as an aid to the act of 1748, fixing the ministers' salaries, and
not a deviation from it. They further defended the act by
citing various acts of a similar nature, which had been passed
and sent to England, and no objection made to them.

At about the time when the Bishop's Letter began to be
circulated among the clergy in the Colony, two champions of
the people sprang into the arena and assumed to reply to the
Bishop's strictures. These were Col. Landon Carter, of
"Sabine Hall," in Richmond County, and Col. Richard Bland,
of "Jordan's," in Prince George County.

Both of these men were informed on the history of Virginia,
and probably neither of them had much love for the clergy.
We know that some years before, Col. Carter became incensed
with a reverend gentleman, who preached a sermon against
pride, which he took to himself. As a consequence, Col. Carter
had vowed, it is said, that he would never be satisfied until,
despite the King, Bishop, government or any court of judicature,
he turned the said reverend gentleman out of his office and
"clipped the wings of the whole clergy in the Colony."[39] Col.
Bland had officiated as a lay reader in his church in Prince
George County and the Journal of the House of Burgesses
clearly shows that he was the author of both the Two Penny
bills. Col. Carter's pamphlet, which was entitled "A Letter

to the Right Reverend Father in God, the Lord Bishop of London"
was dated December, 1759, and printed in Williamsburg
the same month. Col. Bland's pamphlet was dated March 29,
1760, and printed soon after. Each of these pamphlets set out
to defend Virginia against the Bishop's charges. They contended
that the General Assembly, in fixing the salary of the
clergy in 1748 at 16,000 pounds of tobacco, had in mind its value
in ordinary years, and had not intended that it should amount
to three times that sum.

As to the claim that the act had not the royal approval and
was also against the Governor's instructions, Col. Carter
argued that there were exceptions to all cases and that "justice
to the people" and "charity to the poor" made this tobacco
act an exception. Col. Bland took the ground of the Salus
populi suprema est lex and argued that necessity made its own
law, and that in certain cases even royal instructions "may be
deviated from with impunity."

Rev. William Robinson in a letter dated November 20, 1760,
informed Dr. Sherlock, the Bishop of London, that the two
pamphlets were received with great applause in the Colony,
"which," he said, "sufficiently showed to what a pitch of insolence
many are arrived at not only against our most worthy
Diocesan, but likewise against his Majesty's most honorable
Privy Council." He thought that the tendency of the whole
affair was "to bring about a change in our religion as may
alter the constitution of the State."

In the meantime, Mr. Camm on June 27, 1760, in company
with Mr. Warrington and Mr. Robinson came up from Hampton
to Williamsburg. After their arrival they called upon the
Governor at the Palace and handed him the order of the Privy
Council and the instructions to put them into effect. Mr. Robinson's
account of the interview is not calculated to give us a
very high opinion of the behavior of men in high society in
those days. The Governor flew into a great passion and called
with great vociferation to his negroes, telling them when
assembled, with his finger pointed at Mr. Camm's face, to

"look at that Gentleman and be sure to know him again and
under no circumstances to permit him to revisit the Palace."

Says Camm's friend, Mr. Robinson: "There was something
peculiar in this last indignity, for it is the greatest
affront that can be put upon a freeman here to give orders concerning
him to his slaves."

The two clergymen therefore left the palace, and repaired
to the Mayor before whom Robinson made an affidavit that he
had seen Mr. Camm deliver the papers to the governor, a procedure
on the part of Mr. Robinson which long rankled in Fauquier's
bosom and which he never entirely forgave.

After this Mr. Camm tried to induce Mr. Dawson to call
the clergy that he might report to them the result of his mission,
but Mr. Dawson, who was friendly to the governor,
declined. The commissary indeed appears at this time to have
been in a very unhappy condition not only in regard to the
clergy of whom he was the nominal head, but in regard to the
professors of the College of which he was the president.[40]

In August, 1760, two of the new professors, Rev. Jacob
Rowe and Rev. Goronwy Owen, becoming merry with the wine
cup, led the boys of the College in a row with the boys of the
town, and the former was removed and the latter to save himself
resigned. The commissary himself began to drink hard
and was indicted by the grand jury for drunkenness. When he
was arraigned before the College Board, he confessed the
offense, but had the honor to have an excuse made for him by
his friend, Governor Fauquier, who said that it was no wonder
that the poor man got drunk, since he had been driven to desperation
by persons of his own cloth. His death a few weeks
later on December 2, 1760, seems to show that he was suffering
under a complete breakdown, and was really not responsible
for his conduct. In his obituary in the Maryland Gazette, no
doubt the work of his friend Fauquier, Mr. Dawson is praised
for his "moderation, meekness, forgiveness and long suffering,"
and it is also stated that "it is much to be feared he fell

a victim to the repeated marks of ingratitude and malice which
he, unhappy man, frequently experienced in his passage
through this State of Probation."

In his place, and to the disgust of Governor Fauquier
especially, Rev. William Robinson was appointed by the
Bishop of London commissary and Rev. William Yates succeeded
as president of the College.

Governor Fauquier issued a proclamation in regard to the
royal disallowance, but by using the word "repeal," not to be
found in the order of the Privy Council, he disseminated the
notion that the Two Penny Act, which had now expired by its
own limitations, was only annulled from the time of the proclamation
and not from its inception, which of course made the
remedy of very little value.

Afraid to risk all upon Mr. Camm's suit in the General
Court, various other ministers, acting independently, instituted
separate actions in the county courts. Among these were
Rev. Thomas Warrington, who sued in Elizabeth City County,
Rev. Alexander White, who sued in King William County, and
Rev. James Maury, who brought suit in Hanover County.

Mr. Camm, now pretty well warmed up to the fight, wrote
a pamphlet about August, 1763, which he called "A Single
and Distinct View of the Act vulgarly called the Two Penny
Act," in which he severely criticised "the justice and charity"
ascribed to the same by Col. Carter in his pamphlet in 1759,
and the Salus Populi argument of Col. Richard Bland's in
1760. Unable to find a publisher in Williamsburg, he had it
published by Jonas Green that year at Annapolis, in Maryland.

Col. Bland retorted in a letter published in the Virginia
Gazette, October 28, 1763, and Camm, replied in a letter entitled
"Observations," published shortly after. Personalities flew
about quite freely, and in the early part of 1764, Col. Carter
came to Bland's assistance with a pamphlet entitled "The
Rector Detected: Being a just defense of The Two Penny Act
against the artful misrepresentations of the Reverend John
Camm, rector of Yorkhampton, in his Single and Distinct

View, containing also a plain confutation of his several Hints,
as a specimen of the Justice and Charity of Colonel Landon
Carter." Bland's letter in the Gazette and Camm's "Observation"
were published by Bland in his pamphlet "The Colonel
Dismounted" hereafter described.

In the meantime, the separate actions in the county courts
by the ministers were tried with varied results. In the suit of
Rev. Thomas Warrington, of Elizabeth City County, the jury
gave damages if the court considered the law invalid, but the
court held the act to be valid and refused to enter up judgment
for the plaintiff.[41] In the case of the Rev. Alexander White, St.
David's Parish, King William County, all the questions were
left to the jury, and they found against him. In both these
cases, appeals were taken to the General Court, where Mr.
Camm's suit was pending.

None of the suits which were brought excited such interest
as that instituted by Rev. James Maury, of Fredericksville
Parish, Hanover County. In this case the court decided the
Two Penny Act to be null and void, and a jury was summoned
for the December term, 1763, to ascertain the damages. The
vivid grouping of authentic incidents around the trial has no
rival in the story of the writ of assistance in Massachusetts.
If Otis in Massachusetts, in the language of John Adams, was
"a flame of fire," his light soon burnt low, when the crisis of
the Stamp Act was reached. On the other hand, Patrick Henry,
who now flamed before the people of Virginia in Hanover in
the Parsons' cause, blazed at the latter period like a "Pillar of
Fire" before the whole American people, and afterwards
shone with scarcely diminished lustre throughout the rest of
the period preliminary to the Revolution.

This is the way in which Camm's friends, Commissary
William Robinson, told the story of the action in Hanover:

"The event of Mr. Maury's" (Mr. Maury himself gave an
account of the trial, which is published in Maury, Memoirs
of a Huguenot Family, 421-423), "cause on the same question
was more extraordinary than either of the former
brought in the county courts. For here the court adjudged
the Act to be no law. But the jury, summoned afterwards
on a writ of inquiry to settle the damages, tho it was
proved by unexceptionable evidence uncontradicted, that
the tobacco for which the plaintiff had been allowed 16s 8d
a hundred, was worth 50 shillings a hundred, had the effrontery
to bring in one penny damages for the Plaintiff.
To this important Verdict they were persuaded by the
strange argument of a young lawyer; who professed afterwards
that he had acted solely from desire of popularity.
He was pleased to tell the jury that the use of the clergy
consisted only in their promoting obedience to civil sanctions;
that for daring to complain of a just law passed by
such a power as the Governor & Assembly, they ought to
be severely punished; that he hoped they would make an
example of Maury in particular, as far as they could at
present, by giving him a penny damages, and that the
King by taking upon him to disallow the Act of the Governor
& Assembly had forfeited all right of obedience
heretofore due from his subjects in Virginia. For all of
which he received no Check from the Court, nor has he
hitherto been taken notice of by any other power; tho' he
pleaded before a numerous audience of magistrates & Assembly
men & persons of all ranks in the Colony, some of
whom did murmur at the time `treason, treason!' * * *
After the trial was over this Lawyer excused himself to
the plaintiff by telling him that he had no ill will against
him or wished to hurt him, but that he said what he did to
make himself popular. He has succeeded in making himself
popular in that part of the country where he lives. He has
since been chosen a representative for one of the counties
in which character he has lately distinguished himself in

It may be proper to say here that Henry's part in this controversy
has been often misunderstood. His speech has been
taken as the beginning of Virginia's protest against the prerogative,
whereas the first Two Penny Act disregarding the
accepted constitution was eight years before him. Nor was
his action an advocacy of the poor against the rich, as the latter
class fared best under the Two Penny Act. As a matter of
fact, "Henry fought the battle of the whole colony and of the
ruling powers more than of any other element."[42]

The result in Mr. Maury's case was very disheartening to
all of the clergy except their intrepid leader, Rev. John Camm,
who was not to be beat so readily. In the spring of 1764 he
published a pamphlet in reply to Colonel Carter's "Rector
Detected," entitled "A Review of the Rector Detected or the
Colonel Reconnoitered. Part of the First." In this very spicy
production Camm took notice of Colonel Carter's rather singular
argument that the passage of the Two Penny Act without
a suspending clause, instead of exhibiting a treasonable intent,
was proof of "the most dutiful regard imaginable to the Sovereign,"
"whose innate goodness could not require such a clause
in a thing so universally desired." Said Camm in reply:

In April, 1764, Mr. Camm's case, which I fear had been purposely
delayed before the General Court, came up for a hearing
after more than three years' sleep on the docket. The

lawyer opposed to him was Robert Carter Nicholas, a strong
friend of the established church, but who assumed the ground
first suggested by Fauquier's use of the word "repeal" in his
proclamation that the King's order was prospective and could
have no effect on the Two Penny Act, which had expired before
the disallowance came to hand. The result was that the majority
of the Court—John Blair, John Tayloe, William Byrd,
Presley Thornton and Robert Carter Burwell—decided
against Camm's conclusions, and in favor of the validity of the
act;[43] As the court was not equally divided, Governor Fauquier
did not vote, but after the judgment was given he arose and
declared that it had his full concurrence.

About July, 1764, Col. Bland came out in a pamphlet written
eight months before, as a reply to Camm's "Single and
Distinct View." It was entitled: "The Colonel Dismounted,
or the Rector Vindicated, in a letter addressed to his Reverence,
containing a dissertation upon the Constitution of the
Colony."

He took the ground which it appears had been urged in the
General Court in Camm's case, a very reasonable one, that a
law passed by the Assembly and approved by the Governor
was legal, however much the governor himself might be subject
to punishment as overstepping his instructions.

The chief importance of this pamphlet lies in its earnest
discussion of the Virginia constitution under the British Sovereign.
Indeed, in his perception of the real authority of an
American colony Bland is not only ahead of James Otis,
Samuel Adams or any other pamphleteer or writer in time, but
is far ahead of them in his views. This pamphlet is the great
initial paper of the American Revolution.

It covered the whole ground of the American contention
short of its most advanced stages. It argued that "any law[44]

respecting our internal policy which may hereafter be imposed
upon us by Act of Parliament is arbitrary and may be
opposed." These words exempted laws for the regulation of
trade, but plainly included taxes for revenue purposes,
whether laid directly or indirectly by imports. Bland denied
that Parliament had any right to make any laws affecting Virginia's
home affairs, and asserted that Virginia's Code of Law
consisted of the common law, the statutes of England made
before the settlement at Jamestown, and the statutes of her
own General Assembly.[45]

Mr. Camm appealed his case to England, and in the very
letter which the Virginia Committee of Correspondence wrote
to their agent in London, July 28, 1764, protesting against the
Stamp Act, instructions were given to him to see that the suit
appealed by Camm was properly defended. In 1765 Camm
published in Williamsburg what appears to be a final pamphlet
in the controversy, entitled "Critical Remarks on a Letter
Ascribed to Common Sense," in which he shows up the inconsistencies
in the argument of Bland and Carter not without
considerable effect. His appeal to the Privy Council was heard
in 1767, but the Privy Council, anxious at that time to conciliate
Virginia, dismissed the suit on the ground that it was
improperly brought.

Mr. Warrington appealed to the General Court, but it
declined to hear the case pending Camm's appeal in England.
After the adverse action of the Privy Council the General
Court in Virginia at the October term, 1767, decided against
Warrington, and even refused to permit an appeal to England,
arguing that the decision in Camm's case had decided the whole

matter. The judges, however, must have known that the
decision was on a mere technicality and did not preclude
a new suit.

Still unconquered, Mr. Camm prevailed upon the convention
of the clergy, which assembled in 1769, on the incoming
of Lord Botetourt to appoint a committee to consider an application
to the Governor for a mandamus to remove Warrington's
cause to England. Robinson was now dead, and James
Horrocks, who was both commissary and president of the College,
advised against the application, and it is probable that
Botetourt refused to issue the writ: for we see no more of the
Parsons' causes in the record.

If at any time casuistry was employed by the assembly,
the governor, the courts, or the juries, it shows better than
anything else the determination of the Virginians to defeat the
King's will. The people of Virginia felt that the salaries paid
the clergy were taken from their pockets, and, as with the
Stamp Act, they claimed the right to control their own money
without interference from abroad. Such, indeed, were the sentiments
expressed to the world by the House of Burgesses at
this very time on the subject of the duties on tea.[46]

Such is the history of the controversy over the Two Penny
Acts. Unlike the question of the Writs of Assistance in Massachusetts,
which occupied but short attention in that colony, and
involved only rights applicable to any British citizen, this
controversy convulsed the Colony of Virginia for 14 years and
interested all orders of society. It was carried to England and
was discussed by the Bishops, the Board of Trade, the Privy
Council and the King. Unlike the result in Massachusetts,
where Writs of Assistance were enforced, down to the Boston

Port bill, the Virginia People came out victorious, a result
which the historian Lecky declares greatly encouraged their
opposition to the measures of the ministry.[47]

Patrick Henry