Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/407

 an attack by a foreign enemy, without any proportionate advantage.

The mercantile system bore less hardly on Virginia than on New England. Her soil was capable of producing a commodity which found a remunerative market in the mother country, whereas New England was thrown back upon her agricultural products, which it was impossible after 1650 to import into England on account of the heavy duties then imposed to protect the English farmer from foreign competition. The inhabitants of New England were, therefore, compelled to exchange their provisions for the rum, sugar, and molasses of the West Indies, as almost their only resource for obtaining the means of paying for the English manufactures needed by her people. Virginia having a direct trade with the mother country in a commodity for which a market was always ready there, a commodity that assured the acquisition of all manufactured articles entering into the general economy of her population, was deprived of one of the strongest motives in which the development of manufactures has its origin. Such development begins with local wants, and growing larger and more extensive in its scope, ends in supplying foreign needs. The Virginian planter was not forced, like the farmer of New England, to transfer his products to Barbadoes and Jamaica to be exchanged for the products of those islands, which in turn were to be conveyed to the English ports, there to be sold to obtain the clothing which he was to wear, the furniture which he was to place in his chamber and hall, the utensils for use in his kitchen and dairy, the tools for handling in his workshop, and the implements which he was to employ in his fields. The English ship that sailed up to his wharf came loaded down with a cargo of these articles, which were offered to him for his tobacco; and he had