Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/583

 admirably adapted to prepare him to make his way successfully when he had become free. If the system of indented white laborers had prevailed down to the Revolution without the introduction of a single negro upon the soil of Virginia, there would have been found, after the establishment of the national independence, a community composed entirely of a homogeneous English stock. All the influence, of the system of large plantations, to which the great personalities of Virginia in that momentous era are principally due, would have been in operation, because the system of white indented laborers, as the early history of the seventeenth century shows, would have promoted, equally with the institution of slavery, the expansion in the area of the separate estates.

It is impossible to speculate without interest upon the probable condition of Virginia after the Revolution if the planters had had only the white laborer to depend on. Would the importation of indented servants from England have continued? Hardly in the same volume, although the dearness of labor in the State, as in the Colony, would have led to the offer of strong inducements by the planters to procure foreign laborers, among whom the English would doubtless have been preferred. Under the new political r&eacute;gime, it was quite improbable that indented labor as known in the seventeenth century would have prevailed, because of its inconsistency with the spirit of the new institutions. The modern system of free labor would no doubt have sprung up, and this might have been a cause of serious embarrassment to the owners of great estates. The system of large plantations, a soon a artificial manures began to be used in the cultivation of tobacco, would probably have yielded to the influences of disintegration attendant on free labor; Virginia might have grown into close sympathy with the economic