Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Fragment on the Pistole Fee, Claimed by the Governor of Virginia, 1753
Robert Dinwiddie was destined to be unpopular from his first act as Gov ernor to the last However welcome he may have been to the large and rapidly increasing number of dissentersin the colony, being himself one of the Church of Scotland, he soon ran coun ter to the ruling opinion of the politi cal leaders. His attempt to carry out his instructions brought out a re monstrance from the Burgesses, who claimed he was exercising unjustly the royal prerogative and his revival of a land fee, long allowed to slumber, excited a general feeling against him. Virginians had for many years acquired new land by means of a warrant of survey, without a patent or expense. In this way they escaped the payment of any fee for a formal grant, and could enjoy the use of the land without paying a quit rent to the government. It is said that a million of acres were claimed under such ten ure when Dinwiddie came into the governorship. Acting with the advice of his council, Dinwiddie established a fee of a pistole for every seal annexed to each grant, a charge that was at once questioned by the Burgesses, as an extraordinary fee, and they wished to know his authority for the imposi. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
