commercial relations with all the civilized nations of the world. Native Englishmen, in asserting the right to transport their commodities to foreign lands, were not trenching upon their duty to the parent state, because they were the parent state itself, and it was obviously to the advantage of the parent state that its people should have an unhampered trade with all mankind. It was in reality equally to the advantage of the inhabitants of Virginia in the seventeenth century that they should be permitted to dispose of their products in the open markets of the world. If the mother country, however, was to be deprived of the customs which it levied upon the tobacco exported to England from the Colony, a result that was certain to spring from the diversion of the annual crop to foreign ports, and if the vessels of aliens were to be the vehicles of conveyance, and the aliens themselves should also be at liberty to supply the planters with merchandise, it can be plainly seen that England would derive no benefit from Virginia beyond the fact that it offered a place of settlement to her surplus population.[1]
The first ground of interference on the part of the English Government with the transfer of Virginian tobacco to the Continent was, that this course reduced the royal income by curtailing the volume of customs, and this continued to be the principal cause of objection down
- ↑ In judging the restrictive policy of England in its commercial relations with Virginia in the seventeenth century, it should be carefully borne in mind, first, that England’s ability to afford Virginia the protection which it needed was in large measure dependent upon the customs which were laid on the tobacco imported from Virginia itself; and, secondly, that England not only prohibited the cultivation of tobacco on her own soil, but also excluded from her own markets the tobacco of all foreign countries, in doing which she necessarily increased the cost of the leaf to the English consumer. These sacrifices on her part called, in the opinion of the English people, for some sacrifices in return on the part of Virginia and the other English colonies producing tobacco.
