Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/405

 balance of trade constantly in favor of these countries. The amount of English goods which they took in exchange was insignificant, and as the difference in the balance in trade was paid in coin, there resulted a condition which in that age appeared full of danger to English interests. The persistence with which the Virginians continued to cultivate tobacco occasioned keen disappointment to English economists in the early part of the seventeenth century, as it destroyed all prospect of the Colony&#8217;s furnishing a remedy for this supposedly unfortunate state of trade by presenting a field where England would be able to procure the raw materials which she required in exchange for her manufactures, without the need of passing a single pound sterling in addition.

While Virginia did not fulfil the hope that had been entertained as to its ability to furnish the English people with the supplies exported hitherto from the continent of Europe, the expectation that it would form a valuable market for the sale of English merchandise was soon found to be just. That the Colony was in a position to purchase this merchandise was to be attributed not to shipments of iron, timber, potash, hemp, silk, and the other commodities which English statesmen had at one time so confidently looked forward to obtaining from its soil, but to shipments of tobacco, a product which, in the beginning, the English Government had sought strenuously to discourage, and had afterwards striven hard to monopolize, at first unsuccessfully but successfully later, when, by the terms of the Navigation Act of 1660, it became an enumerated article.

The same commercial principle influencing the English authorities to use every means at their command to prevent the diversion to Holland and other foreign countries of the tobacco produced in Virginia, also impelled them