George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 2, 17th edition.

[190] and it continued so for more than a century—by fac-

Chap. XIV.}

tors of foreign merchants. Thus the influence of wealth, under the modern form of stocks and accumulations of money, was always inconsiderable; and men were so widely scattered—like hermits among the heathen—that far the smallest number were within reach of the direct influence of the established church or of government. In Virginia, except in matters that related to foreign commerce, a man's own will went far towards being his law.

Yet the germs of an aristocracy existed; and there was already a tendency towards obtaining for it the sanction of colonial legislation. Unlike Massachusetts, Virginia was a continuation of English society. The first colonists were not fugitives from persecution, they came, rather, under the auspices of the nobility, the church, and the mercantile interests of England; they brought with them an attachment to monarchy; a deep reverence for the Anglican church; a love for England and English institutions. Their minds had never been disciplined into an antipathy to feudalism, their creed had never been shaken by the progress of skepticism; no new ideas of natural rights had as yet inclined them to ‘faction.’ The Anglican church was, therefore, without repugnance, sanctioned as the religion of the state; and a religion established by law always favors aristocracy; for it seeks support, not in conviction only, but in vested rights. The rise of the plebeian sects, which swarmed in England, was, for the present at least, prevented, and unity of worship, with few exceptions, continued for about a century from the settlement of Jamestown. The aristocracy of Virginia was, from its origin, exclusively a landed aristocracy; its germ lay in the manner in which rights to the soil had