As the colonists, now numbering 4000 men, were living in eleven settlements, or "boroughs," it was ordered that each borough should elect two men to sit in a legislature to be called the House of Burgesses.

This house, the first representative assembly ever held by white men in America, met on July 30, 1619, in the church at Jamestown, and there began "government of the people, by the people, for the people." %23.

The Establishment of Slavery in America.%--It is interesting to note that at the very time the men of Virginia thus planted free representative government in America, another institution was planted beside it, which, in the course of two hundred and fifty years, almost destroyed free government.

The Burgesses met in July, and a few weeks later, on an August day, a Dutch ship entered the James and before it sailed away sold twenty negroes into slavery.

The slaves increased in numbers (there were 2000 in Virginia in 1671), and slavery spread to the other colonies as they were started, till, in time, it existed in every one of them.
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