Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/616

 tried. The author of Nova Britannia, who gave expression to the sentiment of the Company, declared in 1609 that all the persons who were sent to Virginia should bear a good character. Poverty, he remarked, was no drawback to the emigrant, as the soil of the new country was so fertile that he would soon be able to acquire a competence. In the spring of the same year, it had been urged in Good Speed to Virginia, that particular care should be shown in the selection of the persons who were to be dispatched to the Colony.

The sentiments voiced in these two celebrated pamphlets doubtless reflected very fully the opinion entertained by the Company at large. That body, however, in 1609 acted, as they were again to act in the future, upon a suggestion of the Privy Council in informing the authorities of London, that they desired to relieve the city and its suburbs of the swarms of idlers who in that age were considered to be the principal cause of the famines and plagues with which the metropolis was afflicted. The Mayor, Aldermen, and City Companies, it was thought, would make some contribution for the removal of these persons. That the latter were not expected by the Company to belong to the refuse of humanity appears from the numerous benefits which were to be extended to them and to their wives and children when they reached Virginia, benefits that only men with a sense of order and self-respect could be capable of using to their own advantage, and the advantage of the community in which they were to reside.

If the managers of the Company had for a moment