Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/371

 CHAPTER VI

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT, 1650-1686

every stage in the history of agriculture in Virginia in the seventeenth century, it is necessary to take into careful account the effect upon its progress of English legislation. This legislation touched it principally in the restrictions imposed upon commerce and navigation. As the Colony at this time produced in large quantities but one commodity having an exchangeable value, its single agricultural interest of importance was very sensitive to any obstruction in the way of finding admission to the open markets of the world. As there was always a tendency among the planters to run ahead of the demand for tobacco in England, owing to the fact that their attention was practically confined to the cultivation of one crop, the need of the utmost latitude as to the countries where it could be disposed of was always urgent and dominant. Free trade, in the widest sense of the term, if not absolutely essential to the prosperity of the Virginian, was at least, for reasons which are obvious, highly promotive of his welfare. No one perceived this more clearly than he did himself. The more uncircumscribed the field for the sale of his tobacco, the more satisfactory the prices which he could obtain for it, and the larger the amount which he would be justified in producing.

In his celebrated essay on Plantations, Bacon laid down as a principle of action, that not only should exemption