Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/250

 which were especially needed in the virgin soil wherever ploughs could be used, because the ground was full of obstructions destructive to implements unprotected by tips and shares. Harness for the steers was also required, by which, plough chains were probably meant.

The crops of grain and tobacco were during the summer of this year seriously injured by a severe drought, which was followed in some places by a heavy storm of hail that was still more destructive. The elements, however, were not so ruinous to the prosperity of Virginia as the rapacious spirit of Argoll. Instead of permitting the colonists, whose terms of service had expired, to go free, a right to which they were entitled from the beginning of his administration, he set them upon his own employments, giving liberty only to the few who were able to pay him an extraordinary amount in tobacco for their release. He withdrew the laborers from the common garden, which had been the source of large revenue to the Company, and directed them to his own purposes. The grain that ought properly to have been devoted to the public use alone, a part of which use consisted in furnishing a supply to persons who had recently arrived, was expended by him entirely in sustaining his private servants. The public cattle, which like the grain was intended in great part to be distributed among the new corners, thus offering strong inducements to persons in England to emigrate to the Colony, were either killed by him with a view to the disposition of the hides to his own profit, or they were sold to the tenants and planters. By allowing sailors and masters of ships, as well as passengers, to purchase most of the tobacco and all of the