The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783. Virginia. History, Government, and Geography Service
they remembered their own interests, the burgesses believed they were bound to respect and protect those of others. This was a fundamental part of Virginia public ethics and was one reason for the absence of extensive political corruption. They held that sovereignty was vested in the people, who delegated certain powers to government. This they believed long before the Revolution. As early as 1736 Sir John Randolph reminded the burgesses:
We must consider ourselves chosen by all the People; sent hither to represent them, to give their Consent in the weightiest of their Concerns; and to bind them by Laws which may advance their Common Good. Herein they trust you with all that they have, place the greatest Confidence in your Wisdoms and Discretions, and testify the highest Opinion of your virtue.5
When Randolph made these remarks, he was telling the burgesses what they already knew and at a time when there were no pressing public issues. It was this abiding interrelationship between electorate and representatives which was the strength of the Virginia political system. The gentry extolled republicanism not only because it seemed the right and just attitude but also because it worked.
The small farmers and slaveholders acted as a restraint upon any tendency toward oligarchy which the gentry might have entertained. The small farmers were in the majority and they had the right to vote. The percentage of white males who voted in the 18th Century elections was quite high. True, the colonial voters elected only the burgesses, but that single choice was an important guarantee of their rights, since the House of Burgesses was the strongest political body in Virginia. Thomas Jefferson once remarked that the election process itself tended to eliminate class conflicts and extremism: the planter aristocrat with no concern for the small farmer was not apt to be elected, and the man who demagogically courted the popular vote was ostracized by the gentry. Therefore, the House of Burgesses became, at the same time, the center of planter rule and of popular government.6
The constitutional philosophy of the House of Burgesses proclaimed in response to the Grenville revenue program in 1764 was not new. When Patrick Henry electrified the burgesses with his Stamp Act Resolves in May 1765, he was not setting forth a new concept of government, he was reaffirming, in a most dramatic form, constitutional positions the burgesses themselves well understood. The burgesses had developed their constitutional positions during the 1750's in response to a series of minor, isolated events—royal disallowance, the Pistole Fee Controversy, and the Two-Penny Act.
After trying for years to codify and reform laws long in use, the General Assembly in 1748 completed a general revision of the laws. Included in these revisions were several laws already in force and approved by the crown. The assembly did not include a suspending clause with these acts, (holding up their implementation until the crown had an opportunity to approve them). While a suspending clause was supposed to be attached, the assembly had not done so regularly for years and the governors had not challenged them, nor had the crown complained. In 1752, however, the crown disallowed half-a-dozen laws, claiming the assembly had intruded upon the king's rights and ignored the governor's instructions. Angered, the assembly protested this "new" behavior by the crown and asserted they could not remember when the king had vetoed laws which were of no consequence to the crown, nor contrary to parliamentary law, but which were of importance to Virginia. It was the beginning of a long struggle.
In 1752 there also occurred a second and more decisive dispute—the Pistole Fee Controversy. One of the frequently overlooked events in Virginia, this debate between the royal governor and the House of Burgesses brought forth the classic constitutional defense by the house of its right, and its right alone, to tax Virginians. The burgesses' powers, as proclaimed by Richard Bland, became the fundamental argument by Virginians against royal encroachment upon what they believed were their rights.
Shortly after his arrival in Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie announced his intention to charge one pistole (a Spanish coin worth about $3.50) for applying the governor's seal to all land grants. The council, believing this was a routine fee for a service rendered, concurred. The storm of protest which followed amazed Dinwiddie. The burgesses accused Dinwiddie of usurping a right not his in order to line his pockets. This was not a fee, it was a tax, and only the burgesses could initiate a tax on Virginians. Dinwiddie denied that the fee was solely for his personal remuneration. Instead, he maintained his aim was to return to the tax rolls millions of acres of land withheld by Virginians in order to prevent collection of the annual quit-rent on the land which every Virginia landowner paid the crown. In the heated debates which followed, both parties built their cases around the rights and privileges each claimed was its own. The ultimate outcome, which resulted in a compromise by the crown, satisfactory to both Dinwiddie and the burgesses, is not as important as the constitutional argument put forth by the burgesses.
The house resolutions included ringing phrases which would become familiar in the 1760's:
The Rights of the Subject are so secured by Law, that they cannot be deprived of the least Part of their Property, but by their own Consent; Upon this excellent Principle is our Constitution founded … That the said Demand is illegal and arbitrary, contrary to the Charters of this Colony, to his Majesty's and his Royal Predecessor's Instructions to the several Governors, and the Express Order of his Majesty King William of Glorious Memory … That whoever shall hereafter pay a Pistole … shall be deemed a betrayer of the Rights and Privileges of the People.7
The author of these resolves was Richard Bland, a tough-minded burgess from Prince George County, descendant of one of the colony's oldest families. One of the earliest graduates of the College of William and Mary to achieve a major position in the burgesses, he was one of the most widely read. He held four beliefs common to the revolutionary generations, beliefs he translated into major works during the Pistole Fee Controversy, the Parsons' Cause, the Stamp Act, and the later revenue crises:
the eternal validity of the natural-law doctrines most cogently stated by John Locke;
the superiority over all other forms of government of the English Constitution, of which an uncorrupted model or extension was the peculiar property of the Virginians;
the like superiority of those unique rights and liberties which were the heritage of the free-born Englishman; and
the conviction that the good state rests on the devotion of men of virtue, wisdom, integrity, and justice.8
In addition to the house resolutions, Bland wrote a closely reasoned essay attacking the Pistole Fee, A Modest and True State of the Case (1753). Only a portion survives and is known as A Fragment Against the Pistole Fee. His underlying principle, one which the British ignored and Virginians never forget, is cogently set forth.
The Rights of the Subjects are so secured by Law that they cannot be deprived of the least part of their property without their own consent. Upon this Principle of Law, the Liberty and Property of every Person who has the felicity to live under a British Government is founded. The question then ought not to be the smallness of the demand but the Lawfulness of it. For if it is against Law, the same Power which imposes one Pistole may impose a Hundred …
LIBERTY & PROPERTY are like those precious Vessels whose soundness is destroyed by the least flaw and whose use is lost by the smallest hole.
Virginians never deviated from this view.
In 1818 John Adams, when asked what was the Revolution, replied, "the Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people … This radical change in the principles, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution." In Virginia, the Revolution began in the minds and hearts of the House of Burgesses with the Pistole Fee. Its author was Richard Bland.
The third event was the Parsons' Cause. This event reached the people, and in it the people found a spokesman—Patrick Henry. The Parsons' Cause was an outgrowth of the Two-Penny Acts. Nearly all Virginia salaries and most taxes were paid in tobacco, rather than specie (hard money). Many officials, including the clergy, had their salaries set by acts of the assembly at a specified number of pounds of tobacco per year. In the case of the clergy
Journal of House of Burgesses, 5 August 1736.
For a short well-written discussion of the election process see Charles S. Sydnor, Gentlemen Freeholders: Political Practices in Washington's Virginia (University of North Carolina, 1952, reprinted in paperback as Revolutionaries in the Making: Political Practices in Washington's Virginia.
Journal of House of Burgesses, 1752-1758, 143, 154-155.
: Clinton Rossiter, Six Characters in Search of a Republic (Harcourt, Brace: New York, 1964), chap. 5, "Richard Bland, the Whig in America", 184).