Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/376

 were at liberty to follow the course that was suggested by the topography of the country and the system of plantations. Restrictive laws merely added to the drawbacks inherent in the physical character of Virginia. Owing to the dispersion of the plantations along the rivers, merchants were already forced to seek their markets at private landings, often several hundred miles apart, by the water highway.

The person in Virginia to whom goods from England were consigned was not infrequently a merchant who owned a share in them, and who, therefore, in selling, acted rather as a partner than as a factor; the profits of a venture were often for this reason divided among several trailers, only one of whom had either visited or resided in the Colony. As a rule, however, the factor, who, by the terms of the Navigation Act, must be a native or a naturalized subject of England, had no pecuniary interest in the cargo received by him beyond the commission on the sales. As early as 1639, this commission amounted to ten pounds of tobacco in the hundred. In the latter part of the seventeenth century, the agent was entitled to ten per cent of that commodity passing through his hands, and five per cent of the goods. He was sometimes paid an annual salary. Whether a native of Virginia or England, he derived his authority to act from a power of attorney drawn by the English merchant, acknowledged before an English notary and then forwarded to the Colony to be recorded in the county in which the factor was instructed to transact business.