market.[1] When the full details of the Amis contract reached Virginia in private letters, the planters were thrown into a state of great dissatisfaction. A letter was dispatched to the Privy Council, begging that no agreement should be finally ratified unless it had been first approved by the people of the Colony, and above all, that the Spanish leaf should not be permitted to be brought into the kingdom even in the smallest quantities.[2] These remonstrances, so earnestly pressed, appear to have been effective for the time being.
In the course of the summer following the first suggestion of the Amis contract, Charles wrote to the Governor and Council in Virginia, and represented himself to be much annoyed at the small progress which had been made, in spite of the many years that had passed since the establishment of the Colony, in the production of solid commodities. It was to the dishonor and shame of its people, he declared, that their plantation was built upon smoke alone, a foundation which would sink into ruin if permission was granted to landowners in England to cultivate tobacco, or to English traders to import the Spanish leaf. He urged them to develop the resources of the country in tar and pitch, soap and pot ashes, salt, iron, timber, and lastly in vines. It was not, however, his wish, he asserted, that the production of tobacco should be abandoned; he desired merely that it should be carefully ordered and the quantity tended diminished, in which event, he proposed to become the purchaser of the whole annual crop, being willing to give for it, when delivered in the port of Lon-
