Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/307

 that if the two hundred thousand pounds of tobacco, which the contractors proposed to buy during the first two years, had been apportioned among the three thousand people who formed the united population of Virginia and Somers Isles at this time, the allowance to each person would have been only sixty-five pounds, a return of but three pounds and five shillings sterling for his labor. This sum, small as it was, would have been reduced one-half in every case in which the planter was simply a tenant. For him, the return would have been only thirty-two shillings and six pence, a sum that would not support one individual, and still more certainly not a family, even admitting that there were no expenses incurred in the production of his crop. The proportion of the proceeds of sales which the planters would receive would be equal to one-sixth, and of the contractors to four-sixths, a difference that suggested to the minds of the former, when they came to make their reply, the simile of an infant having forty ounces of blood drawn from its veins, of which about five ounces were subsequently restored to its body.

One of the first acts of Charles on his accession to the throne in the course of the spring of 1625 was to adopt as his own the two proclamations of his father with reference to the exclusion of the Spanish leaf. He prohibited the importation into England of tobacco from the Spanish colonies, and all Spanish tobacco at that time to be found in the realm was to be carried out before the end of twenty-five days. A second proclamation, issued on the