Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/537

 Conditions sjtrronnditig Settlement of Virginia 527 births, yet the population of the city during the same period was increasing. Obviously this was from the constant flow of outsiders into it ; foreign immigrants, English adventurers, restless or evicted, occupationless, and often criminal vagabonds. It was this dispro- portionate and abnormal growth of London and perhaps of some other large cities and towns, the " infinite increasing greatness of this city ", that gave contemporaries the impression that England was teeming and suflfering with a superabundance of population. Bacon in 1606 saw the conditions more fairly and expressed them in a speech in Parliament on the proposed union between England and Scotland : I must have leave to doubt, ]Mr. Speaker, that this realm of England is not yet peopled to the full. For certain it is. that the territories of France, Italy, Flanders, and some parts of Germany, do in equal space of ground bear and contain a far greater quantitj- of people, if they were mustered by the poll. Neither can I see that this kingdom is so much inferior unto those foreign parts in fruitfulness, as it is in population ; which makes me conceive we have not our full charge. Besides, I do see manifestly amongst us the badges and tokens rather of scarceness, than of press of people; as drowned grounds, commons, wastes, and the like ; which is a plain demonstration, that howsoever there may be an overswelling throng and press of people here about London, which is most in our eye, yet the body of the kingdom is but thin sown with people.' The more closely conditions in England in the years just pre- ceding and contemporary with the foundation of Virginia are studied, the more natural does it seem that such a settlement should have been made, that it should have taken some such form as it did and suffered the difficulties it actually experienced. The whole movement was a natural, almost an inevitable one. But this natural- ness does not diminish its significance. The grant of the charters to the Virginia Company, the settlement at Jamestown, the propaganda carried on in England in its interest, the activity of the company, the public discussion of the project, the attitude of the king toward it, make the whole movement one of the most important of its time. The subject of colonization was now for the first time, and for all subsequent time, made one of popular interest. In the years between 1606 and 1620 many pamphlets were issued and numerous sermons preached on the subject ; appeals for support and state- ments of plans were made to the general government, to town authorities, to the London companies, to churches, and to indi- viduals ; the members of the company were numbered by hundreds, the number of investors large and small rose to thousands ; general collections were taken up and lotteries were carried on for its ex- ' Spedding, Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, III. 312.