In 1620, ninety young women were sent from England to be sold for wives; and in the following year sixty more. The first sales were made for one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco, and the last for one hundred and fifty.

Measures were soon after taken for the establishment of an institution for education, which at length resulted in the foundation of William and Mary college. A dispute arose, under Sir Geo. Yeardley's government, with the king about the exportation of tobacco; and great and imminent dangers were threatened by an Indian plot to extirpate the colonists, which was so far successful that three hundred and forty-seven persons' lives were sacrificed, and the number of settlements reduced from eighty to six. A war ensued, in which the savages suffered severely.

After a prolonged contest between King James and the colony, a new charter was exchanged for the old, while he prohibited the cultivation of tobacco in England, and gave the exclusive trade in it to Virginia and the Somers islands. Charles I., on the other hand, claimed the government to himself, and forbade the vending of tobacco to any but his own agents, appointing Yeardley governor, and twelve councillors to make laws and exercise other high powers, which led to new difficulties. The authority of Cromwell was disputed as long as possible, and the majority of the people, being episcopalians and loyalists, ever remained attached to the royal party, and received from Charles II., while in exile, Sir William Berkeley as their governor. After the restoration, Berkeley introduced several aristocratic features into the government, establishing the church of England by law, prohibiting the preaching of dissenters, depriving the poorer people of the right of suffrage, raising the salaries of officers, &c.

The navigation-act was passed by

were laid on commerce; and Bacon's rebellion soon after broke out, which continued seven months, until the death of its ringleader, who had already succeeded in reducing Jamestown to ashes, and sustaining a rebellious government. Berkeley, with great humanity, soon reduced the colony again to quiet; but a variety of changes afterward followed, which may be passed by in a brief sketch of the history of this colony.

Virginia continued attached to the royal party in England through the struggles of the following generations. The French war, in the middle of the last century, had disastrous effects on the new western settlements, which were the scenes of massacres and of several military expeditions, especially the illfated one under General Braddock.

In that war, George Washington commenced that career which he pursued through the revolution with such unrivalled splendor, and with such great and beneficial effects to his country and to mankind.

Says a late writer: "I look upon Washington as the peculiar gift of God to the American people: I regard him as specially raised up as our political Joshua, to guide these people across the swellings of a war-vexed revolution to the fair inheritance of freedom which lay beyond. I behold in him the development of a character that has no equal in the annals of man; and I feel, therefore, that it is true, as has been stated by a distinguished nobleman of England (Lord Brougham), that, until time shall be no more, the progress of our race in wisdom and virtue will be tested by the veneration paid to the immortal name of Washington.

"A review of the many dangers to which Washington was exposed from childhood, makes it clear that nothing but the watchful providence of Godkeeping him for some great end-could have protected him amid the dangers of youth, the vicissitudes of manhood, the perils of the wilderness, and the fortunes of a bloody war.

"It was God who so ordered the anxious fear of his mother, as to prevent