the treasurer and council received a letter, “commanding them to send a hundred dissolute persons (convicts) to Virginia.” They were accordingly transported; and were at that period very acceptable to the colonies,” though the unlimited practice of emptying the English jails on the American continent has of late years been complained of as a nuisance. [1602.] The subsequent year must, on account of the introduction of _African slaves_ into the colonies, be stigmatized as a much viler æra.—The Hollanders were not then precluded by any law from trading with the colonies. A Dutch vessel carried to Virginia a cargo of negroes, and the Virginians, who had themselves just emerged from a state of slavery, became chargeable with reducing their fellow men to the condition of brutes. [1621.] In July, the treasurer and company carried into execution a resolution formerly taken, for establishing a proper constitution for the colony. The ordinance they passed, declared that there should be two supreme councils in Virginia, the one to be called the council of state, to be appointed and displaced by the treasurer and company, and which was to advise the governor in governmental affairs; the other was to be denominated the general assembly, and to consist of the governor and council, and of two burgesses, to be chosen, for the present, by the inhabitants of every town, hundred, and settlement in the colony. The assembly was to determine by the majority of the voices then present, and to enact general laws for the colony, reserving to the governor a negative voice. They were to imitate the laws and customs, and judicial proceedings used in England. “No acts were to be in force till confirmed by the general court in England: on the other hand, no order of the general court was to bind the colony, till assented to by the assembly.” The company having offered territory to those who should either emigrate themselves, or engage to transport people to the colony, found this policy so successful, that upward of 3500 persons emigrated to Virginia during this and the two preceding years. [1622.] This year was remarkable for a massacre of the colonists by the _Indians_, which was executed with the utmost subtilty, and without any regard to age, sex, or dignity. A well concerted attack on all the settlements, destroyed, in one hour, and almost at the same instant, 347 persons, who were defenceless and incapable of making resistance. The emigrants, notwithstanding the orders they had received, had never been solicitous to cultivate the good-will of the natives, and had neither asked permission when they occupied their country, nor given a price for their valuable property, which was violently taken away. The miseries of famine were soon superadded to the horrors of massacre. Of eighty plantations, which were filling apace, only eight remained; and of the numbers which had been transported thither, no more than about 1800 survived those manifold disasters.