Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/44

20 This act was re-enacted with amendments, in 1748, and in this form, had received the royal assent. The price of tobacco had long remained stationary at two pence in the pound, or sixteen shillings and eight pence per hundred. According to the provision of the law, the clergy had the right to demand, and were in the practice of receiving payment of their stipend, in the specific tobacco; unless they chose, for convenience, to commute it for money at the market price. In the year 1755, however, the crop of tobacco, having fallen short, the legislature passed "an act to enable the inhabitants of this colony, to discharge their tobacco debts in money for the present year:" by the provisions of which " all persons from whom any tobacco was due, were authorized to pay the same either in tobacco, or in money, after the rate of sixteen shillings and eight pence per hundred, at the option of the debtor." This act was to continue in force for ten months and no longer, and did not contain the usual clause of suspension, until it should receive the royal assent. Whether the scarcity of tobacco was so general and so notorious, as to render this act a measure of obvious humanity and necessity, or whether the clergy were satisfied by its generality, since it embraced sheriffs, clerks, attornies, and all other tobacco creditors, as well as themselves, or whether they acquiesced in it as a temporary expedient, which they supposed not likely to be repeated, it is certain that no objection was made to the law at that time. They could not indeed, have helped observing the benefits which the rich planters derived from the act; for they were receiving from fifty to sixty shillings per hundred for their tobacco, while they paid off their debts, due in that article, at the old price of sixteen shillings and eight pence. Nothing, however, was then said in defence