Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/550

 himself or by purchasing certificates from persons who had done so. These abuses crept in with the general consent. It may be accepted as a fact that the inclination to disregard the regulation as to head rights, both in its letter and spirit, was not confined to the office of the Secretary. If we inquire into the causes of this state of public feeling, we will find that it was the result of economic influences that had sprung up and grown with the progress of time. When the population of the country had reached a certain point of expansion, the reasons leading to the adoption of the principle of the head right in the beginning began appreciably to weaken, although until the whole country had been appropriated by individual proprietors and had become inhabited, these reasons could never cease to have force. In time, however, there inevitably arose a demand for a more easy and less expensive method of acquiring an interest in severalty in unoccupied soil. The transportation of persons from England or elsewhere entailed, even in the beginning, upon those who wished to sue out patents to land in the Colony, a much heavier outlay than they would have been willing to incur, but for the fact that during the early years in the history of Virginia, this was the only means of obtaining the laborers whom they needed to bring the ground they had secured into a state of cultivation. When, however, the population had grown so large that it was possible to get this assistance without having to go to the expense of importing either servants or slaves, it followed that the law restricting the method of obtaining land by patent to the acquisition of the head right upon the basis of transportation, or purchase of certificate, became in many cases extremely inconvenient. To the man who lacked the pecuniary means to