Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/643

 worthless individuals who had been spirited away with their own consent, an opportunity to say, after having received a large quantity of clothing and been furnished with food for a great length of time, that they had gone on board ship in opposition to their own wishes and had been detained there by force. Exposed to constant inconvenience and heavy loss from this source, the petitioners urged the appointment of a committee under the great seal, whose duty it should be to keep an exact record of the names, ages, places of birth and residence and the station in life of all who had decided to remove to the plantations. When this paper was received; the committee who had charge of the affairs of the Colonies ordered a report to be made on it. This resulted in a full corroboration of the merchants&#8217; statement, it being affirmed that scarcely a ship departed from England for America which did not carry away a number of persons who had either been abducted or who pretended that they had been, their complaints to that effect being expressed at the last port at which the vessel touched on its outward voyage. The report recommended that there should be a record of every person who went out bound by the terms of a formal contract, and that the Secretaries of the Colonies should transmit to England, at regular intervals, the names and abodes of the different planters to whom the servants, whose agreements were with the merchants alone, were assigned after their arrival. Under the influence of this report, the Council passed an order creating the office of Register. A commission was prepared by which Roger Whitby was appointed the first incumbent of the