Virginia's Cursus Honorum

Exculsion and Duty Built the Greatest Americans

Welcome back, all, and thank you for reading! When doing my research for the upcoming Virginia series on The Old World Show (the first episode will be coming out tomorrow!), I repeatedly saw a book called American Revolutionaries in the Making by an author named Charles S. Syndor referenced, so I decided to give it a read. It is fantastic—and a mere 120 pages, so easy to get through. The original title of the book was Gentlemen Freeholders, which was a much better title because it is really what the book was about: how the Virginia political process combined democracy and aristocracy to produce incredible political leaders.

Particularly, Syndor notes that Virginia developed a unique method of raising and cultivating political leaders through a cursus honorum of sorts, and it worked incredibly well…but also would be damned if it existed today because of who it included—and more importantly excluded. Yet it produced the greatest leaders America has seen.

I think that gets to a central political question, so that question and the unique system the Virginians devised to answer it is what today’s article is on. Enjoy!

As always, remember that becoming a paid subscriber not only supports my reading habit and keeps this project alive, but gets you access to paywalled articles and audio versions I record of every articles, as can be listened to below. Also, if you could share this article with just one person who might be interested, I’d really appreciate it. That is how we grow and build, and it’s all thanks to you. -Will

[Audio] Virginia's Cursus Honorum

The Only Political Question, As Shown in Rhodesia and Virginia

As I have written about before, much of what draws me to the story of Rhodesia is that it presents the perfect political litmus test: is government that discriminates on the basis of human capability to find and promote excellence good and right because it leads to human and national flourishing, or is it “morally wrong” because it discriminates in favor of excellence rather than enforcing the doctrine of equality?

The Rhodesians resolutely argued that their system was the right and proper one because it was what made them such a fabulously successful country. In under a century, they had turned a land that had been forever stuck in the nasty and brutish Stone Age—a land where cattle were treated better than the accursed humans who scraped life from its soil—into the nation with the highest standard of living for black and white alike on the continent. They had a thriving agricultural sector, a budding industrial sector, a terrific and genteel culture that brought the best aspects of British country life to a frontier environment, and good governance that ensured the flourishing state of things that they had cultivated was protected.

That last bit is critical, for it is what the whole Bush War and UDI imbroglio was about: Rhodesia insisted that everything it had built and cultivated would be brutally murdered if decolonization were inflicted upon it, as had happened everywhere else, most pertinently the Congo and Zambia. To protect the existing, functional state of things, they needed to keep their Responsible Government, as the restrictions and limitations upon mass democracy imposed by it were what made Rhodesia work. If every bushman with a pulse were allowed to vote for the politicians who promised him the most handouts…well, then, from the Stone Age Rhodesia had come and to the Stone Age it would return. Such is, of course, what ended up happening.

But such was not how the world saw it. Kissinger and his ilk saw the “moral” thing as being the destruction of Rhodesia and handing off of it to outright communist terrorists because those terrorists vowed to bring about equality. That such equality would consist of everyone being equally miserable, starvation-wracked, and under the thumb of a kleptocratic tyrant didn’t concern Kissinger, Carter, or any of the rest.

They knew Rhodesia’s enemies were communists. They knew that ending the just, competent, and honest Smith government would bring about only a legacy of tears and ashes. They didn’t care. Such were the diktats of equity, and so what they inflicted upon the last holdout of the Old World. As Peter Baxter notes in his history of Rhodesia:

as Smith was apt to remark, there was more freedom in Rhodesia than anywhere in Black Africa. This was undoubtedly true, and indeed, Wilson was forced to appease some of the most brutal and disreputable men of his times. Rhodesia existed under the rule of law, without a whiff of corruption, and independence had been achieved without a single burning barricade, shot fired or drop of blood shed. With very few exceptions, this was not the case anywhere north of the Zambezi, but it did not matter. Under current democratic norms, it was the right of the majority to rule, and if that resulted inevitably in the looting and destruction of the nation, then so be it.

Such is why a country was destroyed, and why it presents such an interesting area of thought and study: was that worth it? Was destroying a flourishing country in the name of equality really the “moral” thing to do?

Obviously not. Equality is a false god, and the wages of worshipping that evil idol are national death.

However, that can be hard to explain, particularly in the context of American history and America’s political culture.

Was America not built on the principle that “all men are created equal”? Is it not a mass democracy under which we live, and a mass democracy that has brought us so far? Do we really have to choose between flourishing and equality…can’t we have good government and equal voting rights?

The answer is presented by Syndor in American Revolutionaries in the Making: the political system and culture that built the men who built America was not organized around equality, but rather on a complex interplay between aristocracy and democracy. The unique system Virginia devised blended those elements and allowed the best men to rise to prominence and lead first their community, then their state, then their nation.

“Statesmen come to the helm of government only if society has ways of discovering men of extraordinary talent, character, and training and of elevating them, rather than their inferiors, to office,” as Syndor notes. This is the central problem. Any political system must “do two things and do them well: it must develop men who are fit to govern, and it must select for office these men rather than their less worthy contemporaries.”

This is the quality in which Rhodesia and Virginia both excelled: both could produce great numbers of men who both had the “habit of authority” and were able and willing to exercise it well. Hence Virginians dominated the politics of the Founding and Early Republic, and Rhodesians served as officers in a hugely outsized way during the world wars.

Virginia’s Cursus Honorum

The way the Virginians achieved this was particularly interesting. Family ties of course mattered,¹ as did wealth. It always helps to have friends in high places, and to be able to treat potential voters to a bit of liquor before they vote, hopefully for you. But that only matters to a point. Nepotism might indeed be a good thing, as my friend Johann Kurtz has argued well,² but the promoted heir must still be competent.

It was to ensure the requisite level of candidate quality to maintain the public’s faith in the system that the Virginians developed what was, in effect, a cursus honorum³ applicable to life in Virginia. Each step in a man’s life, from the time he finished getting a classical education to when he grew senile and died, was a step along a path informed by duty, social obligation, and the understanding that he was to prove himself fit for successively higher roles.

The first step was succeeding in the management of a great plantation, as every man who was anybody had to do.⁴ This was no easy task, given the immense complexities involved in growing tobacco and running a primarily enslaved work force, along with handling tenant farmers and keeping an eye on one’s merchants abroad, soil exhaustion, and the like. Easy or not, it was critical to the formation of the gentleman politician of the sort that made Virginia the heart of the Revolution and early Republic. Through learning how to manage a farm, the planter gained the wisdom necessary for his first steps into public life.⁵ Hence why success in the business of being a planter was treated as a general precondition for running for office.⁶ He who lacked the drive or wisdom to steward a plantation would undoubtedly lack the wisdom to decide matters of political importance.

The next step along the path was service in the unelected parish vestry.⁷ Here, the competent planter could begin to mingle with his more experienced peers in a relatively low-stakes political capacity and start to exercise some political control at the local level.⁸ This was his first chance at government outside the bounds of his plantation, and was an opportunity to impress both his fellow great planters and the more common locals—future voters—with wise stewardship of the very limited domain of the vestry.⁹ Such is why membership on a vestry board, though unpaid and often tedious, was a prized position for the local gentry.¹⁰ It was the first political step along the cursus honorum, a chance to test and prove oneself in a governing capacity. In the words of Carl Bridenbaugh, “the parish vestry became the great nursery for Virginia’s statesmen.”

The next step along the cursus honorum of Virginia was to win enough respect on the vestry council to be appointed by one’s powerful peers and become a justice of the peace.¹¹ This consisted of being a local judicial officer who handles minor disputes, generally involving property, in the community. It was a tiresome, thankless job as grating as it was time-consuming.¹² It was also entirely unpaid. But it taught valuable lessons, particularly regarding the challenges that ordinary Virginians faced, and so was treated as utterly indispensable. He who wanted to advance higher had to serve in the role,¹³ and so, as Syndor notes, “perhaps half of the wealthiest men of eighteenth-century Virginia served as justices of the peace.”

The next step along the path to glory was to do tolerably well in the justice of the peace role, so that one would become recognized as a promising young political figure and be tutored by the higher-ranking, generally older men who ran the county courts.¹⁴ Through this, a young justice of the peace learned the ins and outs of the judicial process one rung higher up the ladder.¹⁵ Virginians were a tediously litigious group, so such legal and judicial training was good in itself, but it also served a larger purpose. It showed them how the political decisions made by legislators affected normal people, and thus why it was so important to take that duty seriously:

The work of the county court kept the justices in close touch with life. They saw the effect of general policies, set by the court and by Williamsburg, on the lives of individual men and women. Before them came the rich man seeking to evade listing his carriage for taxation, the tavern keeper charged with abusing an apprenticed orphan, the slave indicted with poisoning his fellow slave, the farmer complaining about poor roads. Nearly all of the Virginians who helped establish the rules under which the Commonwealth of Virginia should operate and who had a large share in setting the Federal system upon its course had seen the faces of men and women, children and old people, freeholders and slaves, when the power of government was applied to their individual lives. In eighteenth-century Virginia men learned to administer law and observed the effects of law before they were entrusted with its making.

Yet further, the county courts were social institutions as much as judicial ones when they met. Drink, socializing, horsetrading, and the like dominated the arcades of Virginia’s magnficient county courthouses. In such settings, the young political aspirant could make himself known to future voters by being a competent, honest, and notable justice of the peace. If he did well, he could commend himself to voters. “Sooner or later virtually every freeholder came to know who the judges were and to have a pretty good idea whom he desired among the gentry to represent him as a burgess at Williamsburg,” Bridenbaugh notes.

Those who succeeded in this role, proving themselves to both freeholders (voters) and the local gentry, were then primed for their first big political role: running for the House of Burgesses. This involved not only a good deal of expense¹⁶, as candidates were expected to provide the crowd with intoxicating drinks of varying sorts, but was also indispensable for public-minded men who wanted to go on to do greater things. First working one’s way into the Burgess and then up its ranks was a sine qua non of political power and glory.¹⁷

To be elected in this role, they had to be appealing not only to their fellow members of the gentry who had more political experience, but the common men who met the land threshold for voting¹⁸: the overly haughty and severe would never win enough votes to be elected¹⁹, only those who could appeal to the commons and what established powers there were.²⁰ This kept both oligarchs and demagogues generally out of office.

Once they managed that step up the chain and became Burgesses, they had to submit to the rigors of such a role. Getting to Williamsburg to do their duty to the state was an expensive headache. Much of the work was routine, droll, and aggravating.²¹ But to do it well was important, for they were always being watched by those above them, and the new members who had special talents were quickly recognized and promoted so that their talents could shine.²²

It was only then that men began being promoted to the truly high ranks of power, whether in leadership positions in the legislature, or to national office—once it was established. Only those who had proven their special talents, their understanding of the heavy burden of rule,²³ and their understanding of how to be elected by common folks who relied on them to take the job seriously were even considered for such roles.²⁴

That system was why the quality of the Virginia politicians was so high in this period.²⁵ They had to prove themselves each step along the way of a long and winding, often tedious, path to glory.

This Is Now Impossible

Of course, this system was built on conditions very different than our own. There were 400 or so families that mattered politically, and perhaps 40,000 electors who mattered—as each elector represented a household, and about the bottom half of free society was screened out of voting. Both the great families and the average voters had a role to play in the process,²⁶ and the combination was that unique mix of democracy and aristocracy that makes Virginia so fascinating.²⁷

Such is what produced the great men of the period. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Randolph of Roanoake, George Mason, and even Patrick Henry followed more or less the same route to power and glory. They each completed the steps along the way to make themselves amenable to the competent part of the population as a whole and the grandees of their flourishing state. That screened for men of immense quality and ensured they were a cut above those of both more demagogic and oligarchic systems.

The problem, of course, is that the system they used to produce great men who still echo through history for their immense talent and competence is that it would be utterly unacceptable today. It presupposed that the state should be ruled by the able, rather than that “equality” was what mattered. Now, most would be horrified by the idea that restrictions should be so limiting as they were, or even exist at all. Syndor notes:

Judged by the quality of the men it brought to power the eighteenth-century Virginia way of selecting political leadership was extremely good; but judged by modern standards of political excellence, it was defective at nearly every point. As for voting qualifications, there was discrimination against women, poor men, and Negroes. There was no secrecy in voting, and polling places--only one in each county--were spaced too far apart.

…

Nearly every detail of the political processes of eighteenth-century Virginia has been repudiated; but, at the same time, the men elevated by those processes have come to be regarded as very great men. Here is a dilemma in an area of fundamental importance, and its resolution is no simple matter. Was eighteenth-century Virginia so full of great men that a random selection would have provided government with a goodly supply of great statesmen? If not, must it not follow that the selective system played an important part in bringing to the top the particular men who managed the public affairs of that day?

…

Such vestiges of aristocracy in eighteenth-century Virginia as property qualifications for voting, oral voting, the power of the gentry in elections, and the arrogation of virtually all offices, local and state-wide, by the gentry, are contrary to twentieth-century principles and ideals of democracy. It is nevertheless certain that the high quality of Virginia's political leadership in the years when the United States was being established was due in large measure to these very things which are now detested. Washington and Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, Mason, Marshall, and Peyton Randolph were products of the system which sought out and raised to high office men of superior family and social status, of good education, of personal force, of experience in management; they were placed in power by a semi-aristocratic political system.

Such is the only political question that matters, and is a slight variation of the same one presented by Rhodesia: toward what ought society be geared?

Is it competent governance that leads to human flourishing that matters? If so, then we need to seriously reconsider mass democracy, egalitarianism, and the like. If we want to flourish again, then essentially all that rot must be chopped away.

Or is it lip-service to the idea of equality, a professed belief that all men are equal and ought be treated as such, that is the highest ideal and thus should be allowed to snuff out whatever in society flourishes so that all is equally rotten? Well, if that’s the case, then we’re succeeding wildly.

But the decrepit nature of our cities, the plummeting birth rate, the slovenly and demoralized nature of our citizenry, the lack of national purpose, the comical corruption and ineptitude of our politicians…all of that hints that perhaps we took a wrong turn and ought return to our political roots in the name of having a functional society. If so, then Virginia shows what that is, and Rhodesia shows how it can be recreated in modern times.

If you found value in this article, please consider liking it using the button below, and upgrading to become a paid subscriber. That subscriber revenue supports the project and aids my attempts to share these important stories, and what they mean for you

1. Syndor notes:

With few exceptions, [members of the Virginia Dynasty] were members of families that were well-to-do and that had enjoyed a favored place in society for several generations. If they had taken the trouble to look at old records, they would have found the names of their ancestors in lists of burgesses, councilors, justices, and vestrymen at the beginning of that century and before. The family traditions of the Randolphs, the Nelsons, the Pages, the Lees, the Harrisons, the Carters, the Byrds, and others were variant versions of Virginia history.

2. Nepotism is good

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursus_honorum

4. As Syndor notes:

In time the sons of planters became planters themselves and learned their first lessons in administration by managing their own farms or plantations. In some instances the establishment was small, but a visit today to Mount Vernon, Montpelier, Gunston Hall, and Monticello, or Carter's Grove and Shirley of the Carters, Westover of the Byrds, Stratford of the Lees, Brandon of the Harrisons, Bremo of the Cockes, Berry Hill of the Bruces, or the homes of other leading families of the eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-turies, leaves no doubt that many of these men were masters of large estates. Their broad acres and ample houses set the stage for independent and dignified living; but their lives were not carefree. The management of the economic social, and political microcosm that was theirs was a heavy and multifarious responsibility. Plans had to be made and executed for maintaining buildings, for allocating fields to the various crops...

5. Syndor notes:

Records had to be kept and letters written in longhand in rooms without screened windows to keep out flies, mosquitoes, and moths. The planter knew the feel of plowed land underfoot, the smell of manure, the heat of the sun, the bite of cold wind, the heavy breathing of an overworked horse, the holiday spirit of the quarters, and the sullen scowl of an angry slave. He learned to accommodate his plantation management to the inexplorable laws of nature and his dealings with people to real men and women. Perhaps from these experiences he gained wisdom for public life.

6. Syndor notes:

The planter, of course, could indulge in theories and speculations to his heart's content, and often did. He could experiment with unorthodox crops, methods of marketing, or ways of controlling human beings; but if his penchant for experimentation was too great or his judgment too frequently wrong, the error of his ways was made plainly and painfully obvious to him-and to his neighbors, for the planter's business operations were carried on in public. Untidy fields, scrawny livestock, and a dilapidated house gave notice through the countryside that the owner lacked energy, judgment, or some other quality essential to good management. A man who could not manage well his own affairs would hardly impress his neighbors as a man who ought to be entrusted with the management of public affairs. In eighteenth-century Virginia failure in business was seldom rewarded with a seat in the county court or in the legislature or with such offices as sheriff, clerk, or coroner.

7. Carl Bridenbaugh notes this obligation in his Seat of Empire:

The first gentlemen of Virginia were, in reality, a working aristocracy. As we have seen they had to be experts in agriculture, know something of elementary manufacturing, display business talents, and act in many executive capacities. To the community they owed, in addition, a political obligation. This at the very least implied service on the parish vestry.

8. Bridenbaugh notes:

But it was in its political and social, rather than its ecclesiastical capacity, that the parish achieved its greatest importance. As the smallest unit of government in Virginia, it came closest to the everyday life of the people. The vestry publicly published all laws pertaining to servants, slaves, morals, and vital statistics; it posted notices about lost property, stray animals, runaway servants, and the docking of entails; it announced all the governor’s proclamations. Of first importance to everyone was the power of the vestry to apportion among the freeholders their shares of the tithes, or taxes, for the support of the church as well as the county and colony levies. The care of the parish poor also devolved upon this body of gentlemen, who were authorized to lay taxes for their support. Often, also, where no county or provincial authority interposed, vestries assumed the initiative for erecting ferries, opening roads, and founding schools.

9. Bridenbaugh notes:

To the planter, fresh from unchallenged authority over his own little patriarchal domain, the occasional meeting of the vestry served as the vital second step of his political training. Here he sat with eleven other planters who were his equals and determined what was best for the middling and inferior folk of the parish. Membership in vestries had become virtually hereditary by 1750, and collectively the vestrymen made up a sort of panel from which Virginia’s rulers were drawn. Government was their business quite as much as the raising of tobacco because their birth, place, wealth, education, practical training, and frequently intelligence, fitted them to rule.

10. Bridenbaugh notes:

Membership on a vestry board was a local honor highly prized, and its meetings were unusually well attended.

11. Bridenbaugh notes, describing the process:

The only other governmental unit of which the majority of Virginians of the eighteenth century were aware was the county. Here again the people were witnesses to rule by the rich, the well born, and the responsible few. The royal governor at Williamsburg was authorized by law to appoint eight justices of the peace in cach county, although in 1769 their numbers ranged from seven to twenty-four per county. Only members of the upper class ever received these coveted appointments to membership in the squirearchy, which, as in England, symbolized social recognition and opened the way to political preferment. When a vacancy occurred in any county, the justices submitted three names from which the governor made his choice. Thus, like the vestry, the county justices tended to become a self-perpetuating group.

12. Bridenbaugh notes:

If a Virginia justice of the peace took his duties seriously, as was often the case, he paid heavily for the honor, because the office was both burdensome and time-consuming. Acting as a local magistrate he heard both civil and criminal small causes.

13. As two examples, Syndor notes:

Thomas Jefferson's grandfather, who bore the same name, was a "gentleman justice" of Henrico County, a militia captain, and a sheriff. Peter Jefferson, father of the author of the Declaration of Independence, held the offices of justice, sheriff, surveyor, and county lieutenant, and he was a member of the House of Burgesses and a vestryman of the parish of St. James, Northam.

14. The county courts were composed of all the justices of the peace in the county and heard appeals related to individual JP decisions. There was thus an interplay between the two. As Bridenbaugh notes:

From his decision an appeal might be taken to all the justices sitting as a full bench at the county court.

15. Syndor notes:

Having passed the first testing point on the political pathway by securing the approval of the local gentry, the young justice began his practical education in the school of government as a member of the county court. Here the curriculum was broad, embracing civil and criminal cases, administrative problems, the fixing of local tax rates, and the election of county officials. The novice was not secluded in a private office with reference books about him; but, like an apprentice, he was seated with several of his older and more experienced colleagues while transacting the daily routine of public business. Thus, youth learned from age, and age formed an opinion of the diligence and ability of the new member of the court. On the basis of this opinion, the older members of the court could retard or accelerate the political advancement of the younger justices.

16. Syndor notes:

From the county court the rising young politician usually went to the House of Burgesses. To become a burgess, he had to win the approval of the voters in a county election. Because it was expected that a candidate be educated, lavish in treating, and proper in his campaign methods, few outside the gentry could aspire to a seat in the House. Only rarely was a candidate not a gentleman. But all gentlemen were not equally likely to succeed in burgess elections. To win, they needed to have certain qualities and mastery over certain arts--qualities and arts that were not entirely like those useful in later periods of American history.

17. Syndor notes:

In addition to teaching these men something about politics, burgess elections played a part in giving them the power to put their ideas into effect. At this time politics was so constructed that scarcely any Virginian reached a high political position in state or nation without first serving in the Assembly. Burgess elections were thus a part of the selective process that vested these men with the power to make effective whatever convictions they had about government.

18. Describing it, Syndor says:

Perhaps the best definition of the Virginia voter in the late colonial and early national periods would omit all details of age, of land ownership, and of other matters and would concentrate on the fact that he was the head of a family. The very poor and some others were excluded, but most of the tarmers, small as well as great, were en-franchised. Because farmers lived on their own land, they enjoyed a large measure of independence. The Virginia farmers, even those whose acres were few, could afford to speak their mind on election day with less risk of economic retaliation than could their descendants in the complex and interrelated society and economy of the twentieth century. As heads of families, it was their business to manage their farms or plantations, to care for and support their dependents. black as well as white, and to represent their families in business dealings with the world about them. Such were the persons to whom the vote was given; and when they voted they spoke for their families in much the same way that they acted for their families in selling tobacco, buying supplies, or arranging for the education of their children.

19. Syndor notes:

Men who were customarily haughty, aloof, and ultra-conversative might win the support of a few powerful gentlemen and thus gain seats in the county court; but in burgess elections the friendship and goodwill of the generality of men were needed. The House of Burgesses was made up of gentlemen, but only of gentlemen who were acceptable to ordinary men.

20. As Syndor notes:

The truth of the matter is that the roster of eighteenth-century gentlemen served almost like a permanent list of nominess for political office. The function of the gentry was to provide candidates and often a measure of guidance as to which of these candidates to elect. The function of the rank and file of the freeholders was to decide which of the several gentlemen to send to the House of Burgesses and in the process to act as a check on any autocratic tendencies in the gentry. It was the interplay of these two forces, aristocratic and democratic, that produced the political leadership of revolutionary Virginia.

21. Syndor notes:

To the newcomer, the House seemed to spend most of its time on small, routine matters; but the experienced legislators knew the importance of settling small matters with large goals in view. To win the approval of these leaders of the House, new members had to demonstrate an understanding of this fact.

22. Syndor notes:

The burgesses knew what they were doing far better than the voters in general could possibly have known with the exception, perhaps, of the choice of Patrick Henry. His skill in stirring men with the spoken word could be experienced by men generally, and it was indeed well known. If the Assembly's electoral powers had been vested directly in the people, there is every reason to believe that Henry would have profited by the change more than James Madison, Peyton Randolph, Francis Lightfoot Lee, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and others who were as well, though differently, qualified to serve the public.

23. Syndor notes:

Their concept of self-government included the idea that it was a burden, valuable but heavy, which must be borne constantly. Carrying this burden was to them more important than refining the forms of political processes; for they knew that if they or their successors ever laid down the burden, or in weariness permitted it to be taken from their shoulders by more willing but less worthy men, self-government would come to an end. They knew no way for democracy to work except for men of good will to labor incessantly at the job of making it work.

24. Syndor notes:

If, after gaining experience and knowledge in committees and on the floor of the House, a burgess demonstrated to his colleagues that he was thoughtful and diligent, ready in debate, skilled in oratory, learned in parliamentary procedure, gifted in drafting state papers, or able to see the distant tendency of immediate problems, he might be chosen speaker of the House, a delegate to the Continental Congress or the rederal Constitutional Convention, governor of Virginia, a member of the Counci, or a United States senator.

25. Bridenbaugh notes:

Gathered here in one room was the flower of Virginia’s political talent. They were, taken as a whole, indeed the best men of the Old Dominion, and there is little doubt that their leaders could compare in quality with any assembly in British America.

26. Syndor notes:

Neither the 35,000 or 40,000 voters nor the 300 or 400 families that dominated the county courts had sole power to send men to the House. Each had a share in this essential operation, and each had to make some adjustments to the opinions and desires of the other. A man came to the Assembly only if he had strong support in both of these groups, and his characteristics reflected this fact. Once in the Assembly his subsequent career was almost entirely determined by his fellow assemblymen, those who were better informed than the voters could ever be about his qualities and his behavior in office.

27. Syndor notes:

Eighteenth-century Virginia did not regard democracy and aristocracy as contradictory kinds of government. It employed both of these qualities in its political system, and it was the interplay of these two forces, democratic and aristocratic, that gave to the government of colonial Virginia much of that distinctive quality which made for the selection of those men who ruled Virginia during the era of the American Revolution.