Visitors to the colony were quick to notice the difference between the Virginian and the Englishman. Hugh Jones, in his _The Present State of Virginia_ devotes several pages to a description of the colonists. Andrew Burnaby, who visited Virginia in 1760, thought that the authority had by the planters over their slaves made them "vain and imperious.... They are haughty and jealous of their liberties, impatient of restraint...." Lord Adam Gordon, writing in 1764, gives a more favorable opinion: "I had an opportunity to see a good deal of the country and many of the first people in the province and I must say they far excel in good sense, affability, and ease any set of men I have yet fallen in with, either in the West Indies or on the Continent, this, in some degree, may be owing to their being most of them educated at home (England) but cannot be altogether the cause, since there are amongst them many gentlemen, and almost all the ladies, who have never been out of their own province, and yet are as sensible, conversible, and accomplished as one would wish to meet with." In brief, the Virginia aristocracy was the product of three forces, inheritance, continued contact with the mother country, and local conditions. Coming largely from the middle class in England, though with some connections with the squirearchy through younger sons, they brought with them the English language, English political institutions, the Anglican Church, English love of liberty. This inheritance was buttressed by their political and cultural dependence on the mother country. But it was profoundly affected, even reshaped, by Virginia itself. Dr. Samuel Johnson's charge that the Americans were a race of convicts, if he meant it to be taken seriously, is of course absurd. It is true that from time to time convicts were sent to the colonies. This is proved by the protests of the Assemblies and by laws passed to prohibit their importation. In Virginia there are records in some of the county courthouses of the crimes committed by these jailbirds. But they never entered in any appreciable numbers into the population of the colony, not even of the lowest class. They were never numerous, the planters considered it a risk to use them, some were forced to serve as cannon fodder in the colonial wars, others were shunted off to the frontiers.