Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/615

 upon the basis of the head right. Of the eight hundred and eleven servants who in 1619 were introduced into Virginia, six hundred and sixty were designed for private estates, the rest being reserved for the use of the Company. While the disproportion was not always so marked during the remaining years of the existence of that corporation, it was still very notable, since the area of plantations held in fee simple was extended with great rapidity.

The urgent demand for agricultural laborers after the Colony had been firmly established is revealed in the fact that the strongest inducement offered in 1619 by the Company, with the view of promoting the cultivation of silk, flax, and corn in preference to tobacco, was that the magazine would furnish servants in payment for these commodities, but not for tobacco as heretofore.

It is of special interest to inquire how far the Company, in order to supply the demand for laborers, was willing to accept criminal or dissolute persons for transportation to the Colony. To what extent was it ready to admit members of both sexes who, in their native country, were described as idle and wretched, and for whose redemption the settlements in Virginia had in the popular belief been largely founded? In a famous essay, Bacon had condemned in the strongest terms the use of wicked and convicted men, or the scum of the English inhabitants, as material for colonization. It would signify, he said, only the ruin of any plantation in which the experiment was