Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/145

 the whole system of affairs in Virginia. It shaped the tone of its social institutions, moulded its political spirit, and guided its religious thought, and but for the peculiar conditions attending the culture of tobacco, would have governed its agricultural development also. There was one department of the economic life of the people in which it could exhibit itself without any obstruction in the local surroundings; this was the general appointments of the household.

In the previous chapters, I have sought to give some account of the different properties which the planter held, the slaves, the servants, the live stock, the estate in land. I have now come to the description of his house, his furniture, his utensils, his food, his drink, his dress, his means of getting from place to place, and the kindred economies of his daily existence. The only inference to be drawn from the copious details furnished by the recorded inventories of the seventeenth century, is that the members of the planting class, ranging from the highest to the lowest rank, were in the possession, in proportion to their resources, of all those articles which in that age were considered to be necessary to domestic comfort and convenience. Virginian homes in this period did not differ in their interior arrangement from those English homes that were owned by men of the same fortune as the householders of the Colony. In one important respect only the Virginian residence fell short of the English. This was in its construction. With a few exceptions, the contents of the house were imported, and were therefore equal in quality to the articles of the same character in common use in the mother country. The bedsteads, couches, chests, and looking-glasses of the chamber; the tables, chairs, plates, knives, and cups of the hall; the spits, ladles, chafing-dishes, kettles, and