Politicians and representative government have been around
for a long time in the United States.
The first legislative assembly in the North American
colonies was called to order on July 30, 1619 in Jamestown in the Colony of
Virginia, with the professed intention of providing “just laws for the happy
guiding and governing of the people there inhabiting.”
The Virginia House of Burgesses had 22 members elected initially
by the free adult English males in the colony’s 11 boroughs. Soon after the
first election Polish and Slovak artisans in the colony were given the
franchise.
The first law set the official minimum price of tobacco at
three shillings per pound. In the burgesses’ first six-day session, they passed
laws prohibiting gambling, drunkenness and “idleness,” and also approved a bill
that established mandatory observance of the Sabbath.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Legislation that arbitrarily regulated the price of an
important commodity (think “milk”).
Bills aimed at preventing some people from doing some things
that are obviously suited to our human nature but don’t measure up to the
moral/religious standards of some other people (think “medical or recreational
marijuana”).
A law to require everyone to conform with the religious
scruples of the dominant group in the community (think “abortion restrictions”).
The Burgesses didn’t have to be concerned with raising gas
taxes to fund transportation infrastructure repairs, or the ravages of global
climate change, or squabbling about the national debt and “shutting down the
government.”
That first legislative assembly got the job done in six
days.
Arbitrary, short-sighted, ideologically constrained government was an easier gig in 1619.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2015 All rights reserved.
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