In 1627 Charles decided to buy the entire colonial crop in the hope of selling it at a profit. But this he did not venture to do without securing the consent of the planters. That would have violated the principle that a man's property must not be taken without his consent, either directly or through his representative. So he directed the Governor to hold a general election of Burgesses, summon an Assembly, and place his proposition before them. Thus he gave official recognition to the House of Burgesses, and it was upon this recognition that its authority rested.[29] The Virginians rejected the King's proposal, but they kept their Assembly. From this date it became habitual for the Kings to insert in the instructions to a new Governor that he hold an election of Burgesses. The setting up of representative government in the first English colony in America has a double significance. It may be viewed as a part of the struggle for supremacy between King and Parliament. Sir Edwin Sandys, the champion of liberty in Virginia, was also a champion of liberty in the mother country. Had absolutism won in England, its victory in the colony would have been certain. And had the King succeeded in ruling the colony unrestrained by any representative body there, it would have strengthened his hand in England, would have been a defeat for the liberal group in Parliament. When the first Assembly met in Jamestown, the year before the Pilgrims landed on Cape Cod, they established a precedent which was followed in future English settlements. Had absolutism been firmly rooted in Virginia, the Stuart Kings might have tried to set it up in all the colonies. The Massachusetts Bay charter might have been voided, the charters of Connecticut and Rhode Island might have had no provision for representative government. On the other hand, as it was the need for money which forced the hand of Charles I and gave legality to the House of Burgesses, so the needs of all the colonial governments made necessary the calling of legislatures which had the right to levy taxes. It is this which forced the Duke of York to call an Assembly in New York in 1684. When the American patriots of 1775 took up arms because Parliament insisted on taxing them, they were not defending some new principle. The principle that one's property could be taken only with one's consent antedated the founding of Jamestown. And upon it American liberty was based from the first. FOOTNOTES: [1] _Bath papers_ II, p. 44. [2] R. W. K. Hinton, Government and liberty under James I, _Cambridge Historical Journal_ 11 (I). [3] Gooch to the Lords of Trade, March 30, 1732. [4] A. Brown, _Genesis of the United States_ 1: 55, 56. [5] Edward Arber, _Works of Captain John Smith_, 91. [6] _Ibid._, lii. [7] _Ibid._, lxxxiv. [8] A. Brown, _The first republic_, 84. [9] _Ibid._, 130. [10] A. Brown, _Genesis of the United States_ 1: 479. [11] Peter Force, _Tracts_ 3(2). [12] A. Brown, _The first republic_, 148, 172.