815

754 1614 114

442 5 7722

York

5233

53° 461 1124 358 2760

110936116135 215046 12866292627|747610|

By comparing the two accounts taken at the above different periods, it appears, that the increase in ten years was two hundred and fifty-eight thousand fix hundred and feventy-three, or about twenty-five thousand eight hundred and fixty-seven per annum; al. lowing for the fame proportional increase, the present number of inhabitants in this State cannot be less than nine hundred thousand.

The increase of flaves, during the last fourteen years, has been lefs than it had been obferved for a century before. The reason is, that about thirty thousand flaves perished with the small-pox or camp fever, caught from the British army, or went off with them while Lord Cornwallis was roving over that State.

MILITIA.

Every able-bodied freeman, between the ages of fixteen and fifty, is enrolled in the militia. Those of every county are formed into companies, and these again into one or more battalions, according to the numbers in the county: they are commanded by colonels, and other fubordinate officers, as in the regular fervice. In every county is a county lieutenant, who commands the whole militia in his county, but ranks only as a colonel in the field. They have no

general

Slaves.

Total.

general officers always exifting: these are appointed occafionally, when an invafion or infurrection happens, and their commiffion deter mines with the occafion. The governor is head of the military as well as of the civil power. The law requires every militia man to provide himself with the arms ufual in the regular fervice. But this injunction has always been indifferently complied with, and the arms they had have been fo frequently called for to arm the regulars, that in the lower parts of the country they are entirely difarmed. In the middle country a fourth or fifth part of them may have such firelocks as they had provided to deftroy the noxious animals which infeft their farms; and on the western fide of the Blue Ridge they are generally armed with rifles.

The intersection of Virginia, by fo many navigable rivers, renders it almost incapable of defence: as the land will not fupport a great number of people, a force cannot foon be collected to repel a fudden invafion. If the militia bear the fame proportion to the number of inhabitants now, as in 1782, they amount to more than sixty-eight thousand.

RELIGION AND CHARACTER.

The first fettlers in this country were emigrants from England, of the English church, juft at a point of time when it was flushed with complete victory over the religious of all other perfuafions. Poffeffed, as they became, of the powers of making, administering, and executing the laws, they fhewed equal intolerance in this country with their Presbyterian brethren, who had emigrated to the northern government; the poor Quakers were flying from perfecution in England. They caft their eyes on these new countries as asylums of civil and religious freedom: but they found them free only for the reigning fect, Several acts of the Virginia affembly of 1659, 1662, and 1693, had made it penal in parents to refuse to have their children baptized, and prohibited the unlawful affembling of Quakers; had made it penal for any master of a veffel to bring a Quaker into the State, and had ordered thofe already here, and fuch as fhould come thereafter, to be imprisoned till they should abjure the country; had provided a milder punishment for their first and second return, but death for their third; had inhibited all perfons from suffering their meetings in or near their houses, entertaining them individually, or difpofing of books which supported their tenets. If no capital execution took place there, as did in New-England, it was not owing to VOL. III, mode

moderation of the church, or fpirit of the legislature, as may be inferred from the law itfelf; but to historical circumstances which have not been handed down to us. The Anglicans retained full poffeffion of the country about a century. Other opinions began then to creep in, and the great care of the government to support their own church, having begotten an equal degree of indolence in its clergy, two thirds of the people had become Diffenters at the commencement of the late revolution. The laws, indeed, were still oppreffive on them, but the fpirit of the one party had fubfided into moderation, and the other had risen to a degree of determination which commanded refpect.

The present state of the laws on the fubject of religion is as follows: the Convention of May 1776, in their declaration of rights, declared it to be a truth, and a natural right, that the exercife of religion fhould be free; but when they proceeded to form on that declaration the ordinance of government, inftead of taking up every principle declared in the Bill of Rights, and guarding it by legislative fanction, they paffed over that which afferted their religious rights, leaving them as they found them. The fame Convention, however, when they met as a part of the General Affembly, in October, 1776, repealed all acts of Parliament which had rendered criminal the maintaining any opinion in matters of religion, the forbearing to repair to church, and the exercising any mode of worship; and fufpended the laws giving falaries to the clergy, which fufpenfion was made perpetual in October, 1779. Statutory oppreffions in religion being thus wiped away, the Virginians remained under thofe only imposed by the common law, or by their own act of Affembly, till 1785, at which time all restraints and civil incapacities on account of religion were done away. At the common law, herefy was a capital offence, punishable by burning. Its definition was left to the ecclefiaftical judges before whom the conviction was, till the ftatute of the 1ft Eliz. c. 1. circumfcribed it, by declaring, that nothing should be deemed herefy, but what had been fo determined by authority of the canonical fcriptures, or by one of the four firft general councils, or by fome other council having for the grounds of their declaration the express and plain words of the scriptures. Herefy, thus circumfcribed, being an offence at the common law, their act of Affembly of October, 1777, c. 17. gives cognizance of it to the general court, by declaring, that "the jurifdiction of that court shall be general in all matters at the common law." The execution is by the writ De hæretico comburendo. By their own act

of