Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/586

 annual dues. This laxness was observed at different times during the remaining portion of the seventeenth century, but there are indications that during this period the quit-rents were collected with strictness on the whole.

The quit-rent was a continuous source of ill feeling in the breasts of the planters; they objected to it in a general way as an encroachment on the ownership of their lands, and they employed every device to evade it entirely or to diminish the burden which it created. At first its payment in tobacco did not have the countenance of the law, but so general was the habit as a result of the necessities of the situation that the Assembly, in 1645, instructed the Treasurer to receive the quit-rent in that commodity at the rate of three pence a pound. Under the provisions of an Act passed in 1661, it was provided that all persons who were not able to settle it in coin should be permitted to do so in tobacco on the basis of two pence a pound, which was the value of the leaf at the time. This privilege was doubtless seized upon even by the few who might have found it convenient to pay in metallic money. There were no evidences of dissatisfaction with this law on the part of the English authorities until many years had elapsed. In 1682, the Governor of the