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 CHAPTER XVI

MANUFACTURED SUPPLIES: FOREIGN&#8212;Continued

great bulk of imported supplies consumed in the Colony after the dissolution of the Company, as previous to that event, was obtained from England, with which kingdom the course of trade differed from that carried on with the northern settlements and with the West Indies only in volume. A detailed account of its character and the agencies by which it was conducted is of general application to the commercial intercourse of Virginia, in the seventeenth century, with all the countries having transactions with its people. Among the English merchants who brought in supplies after the revocation of the letters patent in 1624, and previous to 1700, there were few who could be described as casual dealers, that is, dealers who were without representatives in the Colony, to whom their goods could be consigned to be disposed of gradually, but who instead relied upon the chance of selling their commodities as they passed in their ships from river to river. The objections to this manner of business were numerous. As early as 1635, Captain Devries declared, as the result of his own observation, that all who conveyed supplies to Virginia with the object of exchanging them for tobacco, should erect private storehouses to be placed in the care of a factor, who should be required to remain in the Colony in order to be prepared at the proper season to take possession of