the middle of the century, the difference in the price of goods in England and Virginia was in the ratio of two to three. When Sir Edward Verney decided to send his son to the Colony to open a plantation, he wrote for information to an agent in London who enjoyed the fullest opportunities of learning the relative values of articles in the two countries; there was nothing, this agent replied, that costs twenty shillings in England which would not, if conveyed to Virginia, bring thirty shillings.[1] The margin of advance, thirty-three and one third per cent, was not extraordinary when it is recalled that out of it the duty on English exports as well as the duty on Virginian imports, if they happened to be liquors, had first to be paid, not to mention the heavy charge upon each ton of freight in the ocean voyage.[2] In 1658, a grandson of Sir Richard Newport, who lead been a resident of Virginia for several years, returned to his English home with the report that the profits of trade with the planters were so small as to be unworthy of consideration.[3] At later periods, there were times in which the chance of gain fell off to such a point that the merchants no longer regarded it as advisable to transport their commodities to the colonial market. In 1690, Colonel Fitzhugh complained of the great uncertainty as to whether vessels from England would in that year make their appearance in the waters of the rivers in his part of Virginia.[4] Scarcity of shipping in the James was not infrequently a subject of comment with Colonel
- ↑ Verney Papers, Camden Society Publications; Neill’s Virginia Carolorum, p. 110.
- ↑ In 1654, the Act “forbidding above fifty per cent gain in merchandise” was repealed. See Hening’s Statutes, vol. I, p. 413. In 1661, the law permitted the settlement of the tax of two shillings per hogshead in goods at thirty per cent advance upon first cost. See Ibid., vol. II, p. 131.
- ↑ Royal Hist. MSS. Commission, Fifth Report, p. 145.
- ↑ Letters of William Fitzhugh, Aug. 10, 1690.
