and tobacco dealers at a great disadvantage. The appeal received a favorable reply on the ground that it would encourage the English sailor. To foster after this fashion the interests of the English merchant and the English shipowner, it was necessary to diminish the profits of the landholders on the James and the York and their tributaries, but the remunerativeness of tobacco culture was not sufficient to bear any considerable division. The Navigation Act resulted in inflicting serious damage upon the planters of Virginia without very greatly benefiting, so far as the Colony was concerned, either the English trader or the owners of vessels, although it substantially promoted their interests. It injured the Virginian planter, because it depressed the value of his only commodity by restricting its market. It increased his charges for ocean transportation by removing the competition of the Dutch bottoms, which were navigated more cheaply than the English. It raised the price of all the articles which he purchased from abroad by giving a monopoly of the sales to the English dealers, and finally, it deprived the public treasury of a large revenue derived from the duties on brandy exported from Holland to the Colony, and on tobacco exported from the Colony to Holland, all of which was devoted to keeping the forts in an effective condition.
Mr. Bland asserted further in his petition, that England at large had not been benefited by the operation of the Act upon the interests of Virginia, and for reasons that were obvious. During the last twelve years the people of Holland, having been shut out of this Colony, the tobacco of which, though still inferior to Spanish, had, in spite of this fact, become more popular with both the Dutch and the English, had been led to experiment in the culture of the plant in their own dominions. Any
