Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/75

 the Colony equal to the demand for their services. The most prosperous period in the history of Virginia was perhaps the interval extending from 1710 to 1770. The people during this time had not only a staple that commanded a high price in foreign markets, but also the most inexpensive system of labor, in the light of the peculiar physical conditions prevailing, which could have been adopted. The institution of slavery had not been developed sufficiently in the seventeenth century to bring about results approaching those which were observed in the eighteenth. If for every servant brought into the Colony between 1675 and 1700 a negro had been substituted, the accumulation of wealth by the planters would during this period have been more rapid than it was, not on account of their ability to raise a larger quantity of tobacco for sale, which would have been undesirable, as the supply throughout the century was even larger than the demand, but on account of that curtailment in the cost of production which would have followed from the employment of laborers bound for life and not for a term of years.

There were no scruples in the minds of the English people of that age, whether residents of England itself or citizens of the Colonies, against the enslavement of the negro and the appropriation of the fruits of his toil. Even those most fully informed as to the terrible features of the middle passage were inclined to agree with Sir John Hawkins in his memorable reply to Queen Elizabeth when reproached by her for the horrors attending the trade in human beings which this distinguished Englishman had been the first of his nation to begin. Admitting the correctness of the reports made to his sovereign, he claimed that the condition of the slave in America was less deplorable than the condition of the freeman in Africa, and that in removing the negro from