Company, that the tobacco of the Spanish colonies was of a finer texture than that of the English. Twenty years later, the greatest praise a writer of that date could pass upon the Virginian product and the improvement that had taken place in its character, was to say that there were several varieties of it equal to the most delicate exported from the American possessions of Spain.[1] This was undoubtedly an exaggeration, the superiority of the tobacco of the West Indies in at least one of its manufactured forms being maintained to the present day. The record of the prices of smoking tobacco in England throughout the greater part of the seventeenth century shows that the Spanish leaf was considered to be of the finer quality, in 1633, it commanded in England, when sold for smoking purposes, twelve shillings and three pence a pound; in 1652, seven shillings; in 1657, ten; in 1674, eight; in 1685, six; in 1687, seven. The average price was nine shillings and three and a half pence. The average price of smoking tobacco manufactured from the leaf of Virginia was two shillings and two and one quarter pence. This striking difference was far from being due entirely to the heavier duty laid on the Spanish product in the English custom houses, amounting to six pence a pound up to 1685. On Virginian tobacco, the impost was one penny. Subsequent to this year, it was increased, in the instance of Spanish, to one shilling, and of Virginian, to four pence.[2]
- ↑ Leah and Rachel, p. 19, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III. John Bland, in his well-known “Remonstrance on behalf of the colonists of Virginia and Maryland” against the Navigation Act of 1660, asks: “Have we not in this Nation by reason of the dearness and sophistication of Virginia’s tobacco, accustomed ourselves so to Virginia’s, that little Spanish, though much better, is spent amongst us at this day?” See Virginia and Act of Navigation, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. I, p. 147.
- ↑ Rogers’ History of Agriculture and Prices in England, vol. V, p.468.
