Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/517

 had preferred to pay this duty in money sterling to subserve their own convenience. The author of Public Good without Private Interest, writing during the time of the protectorate, complained of the serious obstruction caused in the transaction of all business by the bulkiness of tobacco, the only money then in general use in Virginia, and he urged the expediency of sending over a supply of coin to be made current there.

The prevailing notion in the seventeenth century that legislation was able to create any condition in the public wealth which lawgivers thought proper to bring about, again led the General Assembly in 1658 to play a trick of jugglery with the piece of eight. It was formerly provided that not only should this coin pass as equal in value to five shillings, but also that no person could refuse to receive it at that figure without rendering himself liable to a penalty. It was soon found, as we have seen, that this gave an opportunity to pass metal of inferior quality, and the law was repealed. In 1658, the original statute was re&euml;nacted, but with the clause that a refusal of sound silver pieces of eight alone should be punished by a fine of twenty shillings. It would be inferred from this that in the popular opinion a piece of eight, although made of silver and of unquestionable soundness, was not equal in value even to five shillings; there would otherwise have been no necessity for adopting a rule to compel the colonists to take it at that rate, unless the object of the law was really to protect the planters against the extortions of the merchants and shipmasters, a supposition which appears improbable, as tobacco was in universal use when goods lead to be bought of the importers, who were as anxious to