Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/271

 The importation of English merchandise into Virginia in the seventeenth century for the purpose of meeting the wants of its inhabitants had something more than a local significance. It was the beginning of that vast colonial trade which has performed so momentous a part in increasing the wealth of England, and giving her an undisputed supremacy among commercial nations. Almost from the foundation of the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia was an important dependence of the mother country, not only as a land to which those who desired to establish new homes could emigrate, but as a community which, as its population expanded, required an ever enlarging volume of artificial supplies. Its steady growth signified a proportionate advance in many branches of English manufacture. With the progress of time, the importance of all the Colonies as places where English goods could be disposed of at a profit, was more clearly recognized, and the benefit that would result to English trade from the exclusion of competition, foreign or domestic, from this field, was one of the principal influences which led to the passage of the Navigation laws, as well as to the prohibition of colonial manufacture on a large scale. As early as 1664, when the second Act of Navigation had been in operation only a few years, the merchandise imported into Virginia and Maryland was thought to be worth annually &pound;200,000, a sum equal in purchasing power, perhaps, to four or five millions of dollars in our modern currency. At the beginning of the Revolution, a hundred and twelve years later, the value of the goods shipped from England each year to her Colonies in North America was estimated at &pound;2,732,036, a small amount in comparison with the value of the goods imported at the present time by the United States from the same country