not be controlled throughout the area of cultivation by the establishment of a regulation proceeding from a single assembly, and in consequence of this inability to enforce concert of action, the price of the leaf was often depressed by the amount produced in the two colonies, where it would have been maintained, if there had been only one, by a compulsory reduction of that amount. Nothing was to be gained by stinting the crop in Virginia if the planters north of the Potomac cultivated their usual area in tobacco the same year; this would only work to the advantage of the latter, and it was hardly to be expected that the planters south of the Potomac would be willing to sacrifice themselves for the purpose of increasing the profits of the planters of Maryland.
When the division took place, it was thought that the population of Virginia did not exceed five thousand.[1] It is interesting to note the local distribution of the planters at this time. In the country situated on both sides of the James River, between Arrahattock and Shirley Hundred, the census of 1635 disclosed that there were four hundred and nineteen persons. All of these were citizens of the county of Henrico. The county of Charles City, also on both sides of the river, extending from Shirley Hundred Island to Wyanoke, was inhabited by five hundred and eleven persons;
- ↑ Statement of William Pierce, British State Papers, Colonial, vol. V; McDonald Papers, vol. II, p. 21, Va. State Library. The census of 1635 places the population at 4914. Harvey, in 1630, estimated the number of inhabitants at 2500 or more. British State Papers, Colonial, vol. V, No. 95; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1630, p. 220, Va. State Library.
