The men of New
England, with their Portland and Salem reproduced more than 3000 miles
distant in the state of Oregon, and within 100 miles of the Pacific
Ocean, may be said in a certain sense to have realized literally the
substance of King James's grant to the Plymouth Company. It will be
noticed that the kinds of local government described in our earlier
chapters are characteristic respectively of the three original zones:
the township system being exemplified chiefly in the northern zone,
the county system in the southern zone, and the mixed township-county
system in the central zone.
[Sidenote: House of Burgesses in Virginia.]
The London and Plymouth companies did not perish until after state
governments had been organized in the colonies already founded upon
their territories. In 1619 the colonists of Virginia, with the aid of
the more liberal spirits in the London Company, secured for themselves
a representative government; to the governor and his council,
appointed in England, there was added a general assembly composed of
two burgesses from each "plantation," [2] elected by the inhabitants.
This assembly, the first legislative body that ever sat in America,
met on the 30th of July, 1619, in the choir of the rude church at
Jamestown.
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