Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/429

 under the operation of the Navigation laws, the planters of the Colony were to a large extent shut out, even indirectly, of all the transatlantic markets except those of England. If any persons would be damaged in consequence of cessation, they would be the wholesale and retail dealers in tobacco in the English cities. The second Navigation Act was only too well adapted to promote the extension of the culture of the plant in the foreign possessions of the Continental nations; the trade in this commodity with these nations remaining to the Colony by way of England, after that Act had been on the statute-book for nearly a generation, was not likely to be destroyed by a stoppage of planting for one year. The real motive of the Commissioners of the Customs, in refusing to comply with the request of the authorities, was revealed in their statement that the royal revenue from the Virginian leaf maintained an annual average in the course of every three years of one hundred thousand pounds sterling, and if a cessation were allowed, the whole of this large amount would, for a time at least, be lost, while the navigation of the kingdom would suffer very severely, as so many vessels were employed in transportation from Virginia.

A more selfish reply perhaps was never in history returned to a reasonable demand. The interests of the planters were to be subordinated as long as the royal revenue from tobacco was not seriously diminished. Such a diminution could only take place when there was a falling off in the volume of production, as the customs remained the same, however extreme the fluctuations in the value of the commodity upon which they were levied. The prosperity of the shipowners, it may be safely inferred, was considered to be of secondary importance as compared with the question of the King&#8217;s income. In this emergency, Lord Culpeper and representatives of the