[Sidenote:  “Court Day.”] We must, however, avoid the mistake of making too much of this contrast.  As already hinted, in those rural societies where people generally knew one another, its effects were not so far-reaching as they would be in the more complicated society of to-day.  Even though Virginia had not the town-meeting, it had its familiar court-day, which was a holiday for all the country-side, especially in the fall and spring.  From all directions came in the people on horseback, in wagons, and afoot.  On the court-house green assembled, in indiscriminate confusion, people of all classes,—­the hunter from the backwoods, the owner of a few acres, the grand proprietor, and the grinning, heedless negro.  Old debts were settled, and new ones made; there were auctions, transfers of property, and, if election times were near, stump-speaking.[15]

[Sidenote:  Virginia prolific in great leaders.] For seventy years or more before the Declaration of Independence the matters of general public concern, about which stump speeches were made on Virginia court-days, were very similar to those that were discussed in Massachusetts town-meetings when representatives were to be chosen for the legislature.  Such questions generally related to some real or alleged encroachment upon popular liberties by the royal governor, who, being appointed and sent from beyond sea, was apt to have ideas and purposes of his own that conflicted with those of the people.  This perpetual antagonism to the governor, who represented British imperial interference with American local self-government, was an excellent schooling in political liberty, alike for Virginia and for Massachusetts.  When the stress of the Revolution came, these two leading colonies cordially supported each other, and their political characteristics were reflected in the kind of achievements for which each was especially distinguished.  The Virginia system, concentrating the administration of local affairs in the hands of a few county families, was eminently favourable for developing skilful and vigorous leadership.  And while in the history of Massachusetts during the Revolution we are chiefly impressed with the wonderful degree in which the mass of the people exhibited the kind of political training that nothing in the world except the habit of parliamentary discussion can impart; on the other hand, Virginia at that time gave us—­in Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Madison, and Marshall, to mention no others—­such a group of consummate leaders as the world has seldom seen equalled.

[Footnote 15:  Ingle, loc. cit.]

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.

1.  Why was Virginia more sparsely settled than Massachusetts?

2.  Why was it that towns were built up more slowly in Virginia than in Massachusetts?

3.  How was the great demand for labour in Virginia met?

4.  What distinction of classes naturally arose?

5.  Contrast the type of society thus developed in Virginia with that
   developed in New England.