It would be an error to suppose that all the servants who were dispatched to Virginia had been originally procured by means which the law was disposed to condemn, and which required the intervention of the English authorities in the different ways referred to. From an early period in the seventeenth century, agents of high character and standing had established themselves in the ports from which ships engaged in the colonial trade took their departure, including not only London and Bristol, but also Weymouth, Dartmouth, Hull, Plymouth, Biddeford, Barnstaple, and Southampton. They followed a business that was considered to be entirely proper, and their methods gave no occasion for disapproval or criticism. It was understood that they were prepared to supply all who intended to emigrate to the Colonies for the purpose of opening plantations, with servants who were fitted to be laborers, these servants having come to them with a view of being disposed of in this manner. Nor did the agents find their only customers in men who designed going out to the Colonies themselves, and who, therefore, wished to carry along with them the number of laborers whom they might require. Their principal patrons were merchants who made annual shipments of servants to the English possessions in America. Many of these agents were probably the representatives of firms interested in the colonial trade, and by perfectly fair means gathered together, for their employers, laborers for transportation abroad.
The great body of servants procured by the merchants by legitimate methods or methods wholly illegitimate, were annually exported as a mere species of merchandise which, like the remainder of the cargoes, was to be exchanged for the principal commodity of Virginia, subject to all the risks attending the fluctuations in the price of
