The Assembly prayed that the treasurer, council, and company would not "take it in ill part if these laws, which we have now brought to light, do pass current, and be of force till such time as we may know their further pleasure out of England; for otherwise this people (who now at length have got their reins of former servitude into their own swindge) would, in short time, grow so insolent as they would shake off all government, and there would be no living among them." They also prayed the company to "give us power to allow or disallow of their orders of court, as his majesty hath given them power to allow or reject _our_ laws." So early did it appear that, from the necessity of the case, the colony must in large part legislate for itself, and so early did a spirit of independence manifest itself. Owing to the heat of the weather several of the burgesses fell sick and one died, and thus the Governor was obliged abruptly, on August 4th, to prorogue the Assembly till March 1st. There being as yet no counties laid off, the representatives were elected from the several towns, plantations, and hundreds, styled boroughs, and hence they were called burgesses. INTRODUCTION OF NEGROES INTO VIRGINIA SPREAD OF SLAVERY AND THE CULTIVATION OF TOBACCO A.D. 1619 CHARLES CAMPBELL JOHN M. LUDLOW It was not till one hundred twenty years after the beginning of negro slavery in Spanish America that it was introduced in any part of the present United States. From its first introduction in Virginia (1619) the system grew and spread until it became one of the most prominent features of American society. The comprehensive view of its growth and decline presented by Mr. Ludlow, a well-known English writer, has therefore a special value here. From him and from the Virginia historian Mr. Campbell we get two widely diverging views upon the subject. Along with the adoption and increase of slavery in Virginia went rapid progress in the cultivation there of tobacco, which had begun in 1612. Tobacco proved to be a staple of the first importance. It was destined to exert a controlling influence on the growth and prosperity of the colony. It was not long before this industry, by reason of the great profits which it returned, overshadowed every other. CHARLES CAMPBELL In the month of August, 1619, a Dutch man-of-war visited Jamestown and sold the settlers twenty negroes, the first introduced into Virginia. Some time before this, Captain Argall, the deputy governor of Virginia, sent out on a "filibustering" cruise to the West Indies a ship called the Treasurer, manned "with the ablest men in the colony." She returned to Virginia, after some ten months, with her booty, which consisted of captured negroes, who were not left in Virginia, because Captain Argall had gone back to England, but were put on the Earl of Warwick's plantation in the Somer Islands.