the value of tobacco sank very low, any addition to the rates of transportation, however small, or to the price of manufactured articles imported, however trivial, had a serious effect in still further depressing the condition of the people. At once, there arose a desire to make at home all the goods which were needed in the plantation households.[1] This was a measure of economy inevitably suggested by the circumstances. On several occasions, the House of Burgesses boldly protested against the imposition of new duties on tobacco, on the ground that all measures tending to reduce the profits of the Virginians in the commodity inclined them to turn their attention to manufacturing on their own account, because their ability to purchase articles of English production had been impaired.[2] In an address by the Governor and Council to the Privy Council in 1692, that body was warned that unless the people were supplied from the mother country with an abundance of the goods which they needed and at the proper season in the year, “great inconveniences were likely to follow by the planters being forced to betake themselves, as many of them had already begun, to the improving and making several commodities”[3] usually brought to them from England.
It will be seen from this quotation that the authorities of the Colony looked upon a general system of local manufactures as a condition precipitated by low prices or de-
- ↑ This was observed in a marked degree in 1681. In the course of that year, William Fitzhugh wrote to a correspondent in England, “that little wool was to be obtained in his part of Virginia at that time, because it had been converted by the people into wearing apparel.” August 24, 1681.
- ↑ Address of Burgesses to the King, November, 1685, British State Papers, Colonial Entry Book, Virginian Assembly No. 86; McDonald Papers, vol. VII, p. 331, Virginia State Library. See also Hening’s Statutes, vol. III, pp. 34, 35.
- ↑ Palmer’s Calendar of Virginia State Papers, vol. I, pp. 38, 39. See also Beverley’s History of Virginia, pp. 261, 262.
