Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/144

 races, the English have exhibited the most marked disposition to establish colonies. Until the settlement of Virginia, this disposition had had a latent existence only. That region furnished it the earliest opportunity for its display. The colony at Jamestown was the first swarm which, issuing from the central hive in England, established a permanent home abroad. Since the 13th of May, 1607, how many swarms have gone forth from the same hive, how vast a portion of the surface of the earth has now been populated by the same race! The same practical aspirations which in the present century have led to the formation of so many English commonwealths in the Australasian seas, influenced men of the same manly and self-reliant stock to remove to Virginia. A natural desire for an improved condition has been one of the strongest impulses for that migration to the Western World which began in the sixteenth century. This desire was just as pronounced in the founders of the most powerful families of the Colony in the seventeenth century, men of honorable origin in England, as it was in the humblest person who secured his passage thither by selling his labor for a certain term to begin after his arrival. In the hearts of both, there lingered that deep love of their native land which moved them to speak of it as &#8220;home&#8221; until their latest hour, and which was transmitted to their descendants, although the latter perhaps had never walked an English street or gazed upon an English landscape. This profound affection for the mother country, a trait which is distinctive of the offshoots of all the great races, had a vast influence upon