Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/91

 replying to the instructions from England, which directed him to give an annual account of the number of Africans imported into Virginia, declared that some years previously five or six hundred were introduced every year, but the number now brought in had declined to very small proportions. He was obviously referring to the time which preceded the Rebellion, as in the interval that had passed since its close, the condition of the inhabitants had been such as to prevent their making any purchases. The records of patents, entered between 1670 and 1680, indicate that the increase in the slave population in the course of this period was comparatively insignificant. A striking feature in the character of this interval is the acquisition of the enormous tracts of land upon the basis of head rights represented by white servants almost exclusively. Thus in 1671, a patent to ten thousand acres was obtained by Mr. Smith, yet among the two hundred and one persons forming the list that entitled him to the grant, only four were negroes. Of the one hundred and twenty-two persons who, in 1676, were made the basis by Colonel William Byrd of a patent to seven thousand three hundred and fifty-one acres in Henrico, three alone were Africans, and the proportion was still more insignificant in the list presented by Cadwallader Jones in the same year for the purpose of securing a patent to fourteen thousand one hundred and forty-one acres. In the case of many small grants made during this decade, the proportion was reversed, there being four or five negroes to one or two white servants.

In 1681, Culpeper declared that as yet no slaves had been brought into Virginia by the Royal African