Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/303

 Thomas Smyth and his associates, and declaring in reply to the royal order commanding them to pay more attention to the cultivation of the staple commodities, that they only affected the contemptible weed, tobacco, as a present means of obtaining a subsistence, and that they hoped in time to substitute for it in large measure commodities more valuable. Before this petition reached England, James had appointed commissioners to assume charge of the affairs of the Colony, promising at the same time that the vested interests of both planters and stockholders should not in the remotest degree be infringed upon. One of the first acts of these commissioners was to request representatives of the Old Company to give their views as to what would be the terms of a contract with the King touching tobacco, which would maintain the volume of revenue he had been receiving from the amount of that product hitherto imported from Virginia, and yet not fall too heavily upon the resources of the planters. It had been recently proposed in Parliament that the introduction of the Spanish leaf should be prohibited. The representatives of the former Company recommended strongly that this proposition should be made a law, that the right to bring tobacco into the English ports should be confined to the inhabitants of Virginia and the Somers Isles, and that no one should be permitted to cultivate the plant in England. In return for the benefits which would result to them from these provisions, it was suggested that the people of the two Colonies should pay three pence a pound as customs on the whole quantity which they imported,