Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/404

 CHAPTER XVII

MANUFACTURED SUPPLIES: DOMESTIC

describing the influences which led to the colonization of Virginia by the English people, it was pointed out that among the objects sought to be secured by that memorable enterprise were not only the acquisition of a virgin territory in which might be produced those raw materials that England was compelled to purchase at a heavy expense, and with a constant risk of interruption, from the Continental nations, but also the creation of a new market in which she might dispose of an enormous quantity of merchandise of her own manufacture. These two anticipations were closely related to each other. The principles they represented were the corner-stones of the famous mercantile system, which formed the commercial policy of the English Government from the beginning of the sixteenth to the close of the eighteenth century. The planters in Virginia were expected to export their raw materials to England, and in return to receive from the mother country the various supplies required. The exclusive attention given to tobacco from the earliest period in the history of the settlement defeated one of the leading purposes for which it was founded; that is to say, the new Colony failed to furnish England with the commodities which she had been exporting from Russia, Sweden, Holland, France, Spain, and the East. It will be remembered that the exportations in question left the