by considering the history of partisanship is, that Great Britain, from 1760 to 1860, was transformed from a monarchy almost totally dependent upon the royal will, to a monarchy which approaches as nearly to the limits of republicanism as it could. without being a republic. Such a transition has of course necessitated a complete change of base with all parties, has brought into powerful existence new principles and motives of action, has, among other results, made Tories more liberal, and Whigs more conservative. The value of party rivalry, with all its corruptions, has been proved by elaborate and vital experiment. The danger of extreme doctrines has been fully illustrated. Those who have been far in advance, and those who have been far in the rear, of the average sense of the mass, have been equally impotent. Party triumphs have inevitably been triumphs of a steady and moderate policy, succeeding gradually and easily the completion of previous measures. To us, looking back upon the finished record, the seeming evils of party jealousies and party prejudice resolve themselves into actual blessings, and become the instruments of the noblest results. In the darkest periods great principles are seen working out the destiny of the nation; and from the most arbitrary acts of power proceed effects, which become the causes of potent change. Throughout is to be discerned a Providence, which, concealing from the statesman's narrow vision the remote consequence, has led up our sister people to the conception and realization of practical liberty.

It is with great self-denial that we tear ourselves away from Mr. May's second volume, and that we are obliged to confine ourselves to only one of his subjects. Besides an account of party, he has given an able review of the manner in which the liberty of opinion and the liberty of the subject have been secured beyond the danger of disturbance. He has traced the progress of the spirit of toleration, showing how the established Church has been compelled to yield many of its exclusive privileges, and how other sects have arrived at entire freedom of worship, and political capability. He has surveyed the history of the State Church, its distresses and victories, its conflicts and concessions, its growth to a more tolerant spirit, and

the changes in its relations to the State. A similar survey has been given of the dominant Church of Scotland, and the Episcopal Establishment of Ireland. The importance of independ ent local government has been enforced by a view of its practical working for a century. The union of Ireland with the English monarchy as a constituent element, and the estab lishment of Irish religious, commercial, and political freedom, has been clearly put forth. He has devoted the last pages of his valuable work to an account of the Colonies, and to the great improvements which have been made in the laws, within the century. Each of these topics is worth great study, and merits separate review. Each of the elements treated of has had its share in moulding the present body social and politic. They have, by their action on one another, produced a fabric. consistent in proportion and strong in powers of endurance; a fabric not less admirable for the beauty of its details, than for its symmetry as a whole.

ARTICLE IV.-THE AMERICAN CAVALIERS.

WHAT Plymouth was to the North, Jamestown was to the South. Let us glance at the history of the first families of Virginia.

The numerous reputed scions of that stock are accustomed to talk boastfully of their origin; they despise the Puritans as their inferiors. On what is their claim to superiority based? Certainly not on the early devotion of their ancestors to the principles of civil liberty; for Virginia was the last part of the British empire to renounce its allegiance to the despotic Stuarts, and among the first to return to it. Certainly not on their tolerant spirit in religion, as compared with the Puritans; for not only was the Episcopal Church established by law in Virginia, but special acts were passed, from time to time, prohibiting Puritan worship, banishing all non-conformists, and making the offense of returning after banishment a felony; and these acts remained in force against the unfortunate Quakers long after New England had opened wide her doors to all Christian sects. Nor can they plume themselves on the general intelligence of their ancestors. Indeed they seem to have abstained from education as from a Puritan vice. Says Governor Sir William Berkeley, in 1671-"I thank God there are no free schools nor printing [in Virginia], and I hope we shall not have, these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has developed them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both." This is a fair index of the policy of Colonial Virginia on the subject of public instruction. As a general fact, none but the wealthy few could acquire the rudiments of English learning. In the age of the Revolution the leaven of Puritan ideas had begun to work a change for the better; but it was arrested in its progress by the counteracting influence of human bondage, an institution which we may allow the South to claim, as its own peculiar glory. The three distinctive principles of American civilization, namely,

constitutional democracy, religious liberty, and free popular education, had their first development in New England. On what, then, do the Virginians base their pride of ances try? On blood, on aristocracy, on rank. They are not of plebeian origin, as the Puritans are. They are the descendants of lordly cavaliers, a high-born and superior race, inheriting the blood even of those who came over to England with the Norman conqueror, to rule over the vulgar Saxon. Such is their claim, as set forth by Jefferson Davis himself. Now, waiving the question of the value of blood, considered without reference to character, let us examine into the validity of this claim. Let us see whether it be an historical fact, or only an audacious fiction.

That the majority of the Virginia colonists were cavaliers, in the political sense of that term, that is to say, supporters of the tyranny of the Stuarts, we concede at the outset. It remains to inquire, What class of cavaliers? Did they belong to the high-born leaders of that party, or to the servile and degraded followers?

Doubtless there were among them some "gentlemen born," but the great mass were of another description. Historians agree in characterizing the first settlers of Jamestown as needy adventurers, vagabond gentlemen, and servants of ill life. William Stith, one of the chief native historians of the colony, says:-"A great part of this new company consisted of unruly sparks packed off by their friends to escape worse destinies at home. And the rest were chiefly made up of poor gentlemen, broken tradesmen, rakes and libertines, footmen, and such others as were much fitter to spoil or ruin a commonwealth than to help to raise or maintain one." Nor was this state of things confined to Jamestown. Sir Josiah Childs, in his Discourse Concerning Plantations, published in 1692, speaks as follows in regard to the earliest inhabitants of Virginia in general:

"Virginia and Barbadoes were first peopled by a sort of loose, vagrant people, vicious and destitute of the means to live at home, (being either unfit for labor, or such as could find none to employ themselves about, or had so misbehaved

themselves by thieving and debauchery that none would set them on work), which merchants and masters of ships, by their agents, (or spirits, as they were called), gathered up about the streets of London, clothed, and transported to be employed on plantations."

Captain John Smith clamorously calls on the London Company," Send us about thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons, and diggers up of trees' roots, rather than a thousand of such as we have." This want was in part supplied; and the vagabond gentlemen and other drones, having had experience of the Scripture, that he who will not work neither shall he eat, mended their lives; and indeed many of them became good planters. The colony was now ready to prosper, but for another great want, explained in the following passage from Robert Beverley, an old historian of Virginia:

"Those that went over to that country first were chiefly single men, who had not the encumbrance of wives and children in England; and if they had, they did not expose them to the fatigue and hazard of so long a voyage until they saw how it would fare with themselves. From hence it came to pass that when they were settled there in a comfortable way of subsisting a family, they grew sensible of the misfortune of wanting wives; and such as had left wives in England sent for them; but the single men were put to their shifts."

Now mark how happily this demand was met. The company, sent over several ship loads of "agreeable persons, young and incorrupt," who were sold to the planters for wives. The price was at first one hundred pounds of tobacco, but it rose to one hundred and fifty and even more. "The debt for a wife," says Bancroft," was a debt of honor, and took precedence of all other debts." It would indeed be highly uncharitable toward those ancient families to suppose that the maternal founders of any of them still remain unpaid for.

But the sale of ancestors in the Old Dominion was by no means confined to women. White servants of both sexes became a regular article of traffic. "They were sold in England," says Bancroft, "to be transported, and in Virginia