Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/588

 remembered that great men of action are the products of critical times alone, for they require a motive and a stage. There was but one heroic tumult in the course of that long period; if no native Virginian took supreme control of affairs then, it was nevertheless the spirit of the native Virginian which sustained the youthful Bacon in his memorable enterprise. The highest powers of the most capable men of the age were directed to the accumulation of property. The country was new and was covered with forest: it required a concentration of thought and energy on the part of individuals to secure material success in the midst of such conditions, and a certain degree of such success was necessary if a foothold was to be won, and when won, maintained. In the beginning it was to be expected that the instincts of the people should be entirely fixed upon the improvement of their fortunes, and it followed that the leading men were those who were most successful in increasing their estates. The principal figures in the history of Virginia in the seventeenth century were men of the stamp of Samuel Mathews, George Menefie, Robert Beverley. Adam Thoroughgood, Ralph Wormeley, William Fitzhugh, Edmund Scarborough, and William Byrd, men who were important, not because they filled high offices, but because they had gathered together great properties by planting and trading.

To the generation of Virginians now living, the history of their community in the seventeenth century should be peculiarly interesting, for this was the period in which the foundation was laid for those conditions that the new r&eacute;gime will in time wholly destroy. All that is great in the annals of the Colony and the State was accomplished during the existence of these conditions; the character of the most illustrious soldiers and statesmen of Virginia were moulded by the old economic system, and her