[Illustration: Governor Dinwiddie. Portrait in the National Portrait Gallery of London. Reproduced by permission.]
[Illustration: The General Court in the Old Capitol at Williamsburg. Courtesy of Colonial Williamsburg, Inc.]
The Burgesses were deeply concerned. In an address to the Lieutenant Governor they declared that their duty in the discharge of the trust reposed in them by the people required them to ask him by what authority he demanded the fee. He replied that he had acted on his own authority, with the advice of the Council. And he intimated that the taking of the fee was a thing that did not concern them.
The Burgesses were indignant. In an address of historic significance they told Dinwiddie "in the strongest terms" that it was their undoubted right to enquire into the grievances of the people. To question it was to threaten the liberties of his Majesty's subjects and the constitution of the government. "The rights of the subject are so secured by law that they cannot be deprived of the least part of their property but by their own consent. Upon this excellent principle is our constitution founded, and ever since this colony has had the happiness of being under the immediate protection of the Crown the royal declarations have been: 'That no man's life, member, freehold, or goods be taken away or harmed but by established and known laws.'"[5]
Well would it have been if the King and his advisers had pondered well this declaration when it came before them, for it gave in unmistakable language the principle in defense of which the American Revolution was fought. And it would have been well for Dinwiddie had he bowed to the wishes of the Burgesses at a time when their cooperation was needed to save the British colonies from French aggression.
But in the meanwhile he had placed the matter before the Board of Trade, and the Board had asked the opinion of Attorney General Sir Dudley Ryder.[6] When Dinwiddie received word that Sir Dudley thought the assent of the Assembly unnecessary, he was resolved not to yield. The fee relates solely to the disposal of the King's lands, he told the Burgesses, which is a matter of favor from the Crown.
The Governor's plea that the fee was necessary in order to bring thousands of occupied, but unpatented acres, under the rent roll seems to have been an afterthought. "On my arrival I found in the Secretary's office a list of lands taken up near 1,000,000 acres, which, most of them, should have been patented," he wrote the Board of Trade, "which is an annual loss to the quit rents."[7] But he did not explain how the charging of a pistole fee would have been an incentive to the holders of these lands to have them patented.