Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/580

 it had its own laborers, its own mechanics. It either produced its own natural and manufactured supplies or it imported them from abroad. There was no mutual dependence among plantations such as would have been observed if the estates had been small, which would have signified a division of labor.

The moral influence of the large plantation was equally extraordinary. It fostered habits of self-reliance in individual men; it assisted in promoting an intense love of liberty; it strengthened the ties of family and kinship at the very time that it cultivated the spirit of general hospitality. Descended from the race of Englishmen, indeed, in many instances born under English skies themselves, the Virginians of the seventeenth century led a life, in consequence of the independent and manly existence permitted by the plantation system, that confirmed all the