Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/483

 The average price of the leaf in the closing years of the seventeenth century did not vary materially from the average price during the period immediately preceding 1688. In 1695, Samuel Smith of Elizabeth City entered suit upon his account against Philip Johnson in the sum of ten pounds sterling, or sixteen hundred pounds of sweet-scented tobacco. This equivalent would indicate that the latter was now worth about a penny and a half a pound. A suit was also brought by the same person against John Collsell for three pounds eight shillings and nine pence, or five hundred and fifty pounds of the same variety of the plant, which would represent the same salable value.

There were as many reasons to induce the planters to complain of the prices of tobacco in the latter as in the early part of the seventeenth century. Both Fitzhugh and Byrd refer very frequently to the rapid changes in its value. Byrd writing to a kinsman in England in 1688,