Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/40

 8 Virginia and the Commonwealth. [1023-60 obvious that, since slave labour is unskilled and unintelligent, the employer would so far as possible confine it to one product ; while the cheapness of land absolved the farmer from the necessity of maintaining a rotation of crops. So completely did tobacco establish itself as the staple commodity of the colony that it soon became the recognised medium of exchange. Between the dissolution of the Virginian Company and the outbreak of the Civil War in England, two events, of sufficient importance to deserve mention, broke the even course of Virginian history. In religious matters the colony, as a whole, conformed to the opinion of its founders, who belonged to the Church of England. But there was a sprinkling of Dissenters, and by 164$ they formed the whole or nearly the whole of the inhabitants of three parishes. These congregations applied to Boston, the intellectual centre of American Puritanism, for ministers, and three were sent. The majority, alarmed at this, passed a law requiring conformity to the Book of Common Prayer; and, as a con- sequence, the Puritan congregations dispersed and disappeared. In 1644, the year in which the above-mentioned law was passed, the colony underwent a second attack from the Indians. The onslaught was well concerted and secret, and three hundred settlers perished. Twenty years before such a blow would have been regarded as well-nigh fatal. Contemporary references, though scanty, show that the colonists, with their increased numbers and resources, now held such an attack cheap. The war dragged on for two years, and was brought to an end by the death of Opechancanough. Between his successor and the English a formal treaty was drafted, fixing a boundary which no one of either race might cross without a passport. After that the land had peace for thirty years. Virginia has been described as a cavalier colony, connected by origin with the class of great landowners. As a matter of fact, it may be safely alleged that the colonists mostly came from what may be called the upper middle class, the smaller landed gentry, with a leaven of the well-to-do trading classes. That being so, it was fairly certain that in the Civil War there would be nothing like unanimity of sympathy among the settlers ; and so it clearly proved. But, though men differed, they did not hold their opinions with enough tenacity to endanger the peace of the colony. The action of Virginia at the outset of the war was probably de- termined by the Governor, Sir William Berkeley, a frank, strenuous, blustering cavalier. An Act was passed declaring that all commissions given by the King were valid, and making it penal to express sympathy with the Parliament or disapproval of the Crown. But at tie first show of force by the Parliament the royalist party collapsed. Two ships sufficed to enforce a surrender. Private rights were fully preserved; an indemnity was granted for all past offences against the