to result from colonization was set forth in the appeal which Captain Carlile made in 1583, when he was seeking the assistance of the English merchants in advancing his project for establishing settlements in America.[1] Colonies in that quarter, said he, would raise up communities which would consume vast quantities of English woollen goods; they would supply an abundance of naval stores; they would draw off the idle people of the kingdom; they would offer a promising field for the discovery of mines of the precious metals; and would open up the most direct passage to the Indian Sea. Sir George Peckham, who was associated with Sir Humphrey Gilbert in the costs of the voyage of 1583, in his argument in favor of planting an English colony in the Western world, set forth substantially the same forcible reasons.[2]
It is interesting to find that these anticipated benefits were brought forward in a number of discourses that were either spoken or written after the first settlement in Virginia had been established. In enumerating the advantages which would flow to England from its American colony, the author of the Nova Britannia in 1609 dwelt at length on the supply of timber to be procured there, the wine and fruit, the silk, flax and hemp, the tar and soap ashes. Mines of gold and silver were to be found there. Virginia would become the home of myriads of English emigrants. It would furnish a market for English cloth. In enlarging the volume of English trade, it would increase the amount of English shipping.[3]
Crashaw, in the sermon which he delivered in 1610 before Lord Delaware and the Council for the Colony in
