Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/484

 declared that the only crop of Virginia was &#8220;stinking tobacco,&#8221; and that it was not &#8220;worth a farthing.&#8221; A few years before, he had expressed regret that the Colony did not produce a crop upon which the firmest reliance could be placed as a source of income.

How enormous had grown the volume of tobacco imported into England may be discovered from the official statement issued in 1689, which had application to the previous three years. The quantity recorded for London for the year the report was published was 11,646,600 pounds, and for the other English ports 3,882,200 pounds. In the light of these figures, the low price of the commodity is very intelligible. It seems entirely natural that the people of Virginia should have looked forward with much apprehension to the effect of the steady enlargement of the area cultivated in the plant in the different American colonies; there was apparently but one result possible, a still greater decline in its value. The only consolation which they could bring forward to modify the character of the outlook was that for fifty or sixty years, practically the whole history of Virginia, there had been a fear, now growing, now declining, that the increase in the amount of tobacco produced, following from the steady growth in population, would soon precipitate the total ruin of the community by rendering its staple a drug in the