In a few days Bacon reappeared, at the head of a considerable body of armed men, within a short distance of Jamestown. Berkeley called up his forces to defend the town, but the soldiers were disaffected, half of them were favourable to the popular side. Within four days after the alarm of this second popular outbreak, Bacon, at the head of 600 men, stood before the State-house in Jamestown. Berkeley, in a sort of tragic excitement, rushed out, and, baring his breast, exclaimed, “Here, shoot me! ’Fore God, a fair mark! shoot.” “No, may it please your honour,” returned Bacon, calmly, “we will not hurt a hair of your head, nor of any other man’s. We are come for a commission to save our lives from the Indians, which you have so often promised, and now we will have it before we go.” Berkeley returned to the State-house, accompanied by Bacon, whose partisans outside, crowding round the windows, exclaimed, “We’ll have it; we’ll have it!” “You shall have it; you shall have it!” said one of the burgesses, addressing them from the house, and they withdrew, pacified. Bacon, once more in the house, “harangued the body for near an hour on the Indian disturbances; the condition of the public revenues; the exorbitant taxes, abuses and corruptions of the administration, and all the grievances of their miserable country.” “The commission was issued,” says Bancroft, “and the ameliorating legislation of the assembly was ratified. That better legislation was completed, according to the new style of computation, on the 4th of July, 1676, just 100 years to a day before the Congress of the United States adopting the declaration which had been framed by a statesman of Virginia, who, like Bacon, was ‘popularly inclined,’ began a new era in the history of man.” “The child is father of the man,” may be said with equal truth of nations as of individuals. The early history of America foretold a strong maturity.