University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XXIII

CAUSES OF POPULAR DISCONTENT

The English Government had always resented the fact that
the English merchants had been compelled to share the profits
from the sale of Virginia tobacco with the Dutch. A large
proportion of this commodity had been shipped to Holland
in Dutch vessels—a second loss to the English traders; and
much of the merchandise imported into the Colony had been
brought in in the same vessels from the same country; and
this was a third loss. Some attempt to prevent these
losses was made in the time of the Parliamentary supremacy
by the passage of the first Act of Navigation; but this was
not sufficiently drastic in the opinion of the statesmen of the
Restoration, and, in 1660, the second Act was passed. No
commodities from Virginia were, by its provisions, to be
permitted to find their way into an alien market unless they
had first gone through an English port; and no articles of
merchandise, with a few exceptions, were to be permitted
to find their way into Virginia unless their last port of shipment
was in the British Islands.[1]

The interests of Virginia demanded a free trade with all
the world, whether exports or imports; and however advantageous
to English merchants the two Acts of Navigation may
have been, they were distinctly inimical to the welfare of the
colonial planters. In the first place, it was impossible for
the English merchants to sell the whole tobacco crops of
Virginia and Maryland in England, and this was owing, not
only to the volume of these crops, but also to the high price
of the leaf in the English market, in consequence of the high

customs. For many years before the passage of the Acts, the
surplus had been disposed of in Holland, where the demand
was increased by the low price made possible by the cheaper
Dutch freight rates and by the lower customs.

Much of this surplus consisted of varieties that were
rejected in the English market. One of the results of the
Navigation Acts was to leave on the hands of the Virginian
planter a large quantity of tobacco that could no longer be
sold, while his tobacco of the best grade, which had brought
three pence the pound when disposed of to Dutch traders,
brought only half a penny when disposed of to English. During
some years, there was no profit to the small planter in
such a price after he had paid his taxes; and his condition was
made all the worse by the monopoly of the English merchants
in the goods which he was compelled to purchase. That condition
was often deplorable. Berkeley, during his visit to
England, in 1661, boldly condemned the Navigation Acts as
destructive of the prosperity of Virginia. "If this were for
his Majesty's service," said he, "we should not repine, whatever
our sufferings. But, on my soul, it is the contrary for
both."

John Bland, in a document that anticipated all those objections
to the Acts which led to their repeal in modern times,
protested against their retention on the statute book; but his
words did not make the smallest impression on Parliament.
The Colony in that age was too weak to influence one way
or another the policies of the English Government, and the
voice of Bland, reasonable and temperate as it was, received
no attention and carried no weight whatever. The Virginians
turned to collusion with the traders of New England as a
means of getting around the Acts; but so soon as the watchdog
of the English treasury found this out, Parliament was
informed, and a duty of one penny the pound was placed on
all tobacco exported from one colony to another.

This continued interference with the freedom of their
commerce, led the exasperated Virginians to encourage manufacture

with a view to dispensing with certain forms of English
merchandise altogether. Seductive prizes were offered
for the best specimens of linen and woolen cloth turned out
by Virginian spinning- wheels and looms. Indeed, the General
Assembly were so dead in earnest that, in 1666, they required
every county in Virginia to erect a cloth factory; and tanneries
were to be established in such numbers that there would be
no need of importing leather; and shipyards were to be constructed
on such a scale that vessels large enough for ocean
traffic could be built on their stocks. Two influences, however,
were at work always to thwart the success of every
attempt at local manufacture in any form—first, the whole
power of the English Government was directed against such
manufactures; and second, the economic conditions in Virginia
were unfavorable to their prosperity, since even a modest
output in the case of any one of them required a band of
trained artisans, who were difficult, if not impossible, to
get. The absorption in tobacco culture was so universal that
men could not be found who would be willing to serve as such
artisans, or to permit their sons to be brought up in trades.

The only device left to the planters for the practical
reduction of the prices of merchandise was to adopt a
cessation of tobacco culture, for this would increase the value
of every pound of that commodity, and thus augment its
purchasing power as the currency of the country.

One of the principal sources of English revenue was the
customs, and the customs remained stable whether tobacco
went up or down in price in the English market. To grant
the right of cessation to the colonists was to keep a knife
always at the throat of this branch of the English revenue.
The English Government was never so alive to the best
interests of Virginia as to make such a sacrifice of income
with cheerfulness; and there were practical reasons to justify
that government in what seemed to be a very selfish policy. If
the income of the English treasury should dry up in one of
its several sources, the deficiency had to be made good by

tapping some other fountain; and the English people were
already groaning under such a load of exactions that any
further addition to it might lead to rebellion. In the long
run, it was argued, it was safer for the people of Virginia to
suffer from shortened incomes than for the people of England
to suffer from increased taxation.

A petition of the Virginian planters in May, 1662, for a
cessation was rejected, although it was supported by the
tobacco merchants in the English cities, and was to terminate
at the end of twelve months. Two years later, the price of
the leaf was lower than ever, and a second petition was submitted;
and so moving was the language of this document, that
the English Government were led to modify their previous
obdurate attitude. The General Assembly were instructed to
enter into negotiations with Maryland, not for a complete
cessation of tobacco tillage in both colonies for a definite
period, but for a material reduction in its extent. The terms
agreed upon by the commissioners of the two communities
were, however, rejected by the General Assembly of Maryland
as unacceptable; and all the influence of that body was
used to induce the Privy Council to order an unlimited production
of the leaf both north and south of the Potomac River.
So deplorable became the condition of the Virginians in
consequence of unrestricted production that Berkeley, in his
anxiety, visited Maryland to persuade its authorities to
co-operate with the authorities of his own colony in a cessation.
"Obtain the assent of North Carolina," was their final
reply, "and we will join with you;" but taking advantage of
some delay on the part of the representatives of that government,
Maryland coolly backed out of the proposed concert.
Reproached for bad faith, its General Assembly consented to
reconsider—only to have a quietus put on their action by the
veto of Lord Baltimore.

The Virginians were so keenly disappointed by this upshot
of their efforts that Berkeley was apprehensive lest they
should rise up in a general revolt against the English Government.

"Should there be a foreign war," he wrote with
perfect sincerity to the Privy Council, "I am convinced that
the great body of the people, made desperate by the galling
burden of debt which has been heaped upon their backs by
the low price of tobacco, could not be relied upon to remain
loyal to their English allegiance." The governor had Holland
in mind; and had the conditions which he was describing
continued acute down to the hour when the Dutch guns roared
on the James River, his fears—at least to the extent of lukewarmness
on the part of the Virginians in their own defense—
might have been realized.

A student of these times is forced to ask the question: In
what respect was England then of advantage to the colony
of Virginia? The destructive incursions of the Dutch demonstrated
that neither the vessels of English traders on water
nor the property of the planters on land, were ever really
safe from a determined assault by foreign enemies. England
closed the door of the alien market and provided no substitute
in her own domain. Nor did she have any sympathy with
cessation of tobacco culture as a remedy, and only reluctantly
permitted that method of bringing about improvement to
be used.

But the attitude of the English Government towards the
Colony in these several particulars seems hardly culpable as
compared with the cool selfishness of Charles's gift of the
principality of the Northern Neck to Lord Hopton and his
associates, and the cynical callousness of the same monarch
in bestowing on Arlington and Culpeper all proprietary rights
in the whole of Virginia for a period of thirty-one years. The
grant to Hopton diminished the revenues of the colonial
treasury by cutting it off from the patent fees to be acquired
from that quarter; and it also tended to confuse the titles
that had already been obtained to estates in this area. It is
said that the people of Virginia contemplated the change
proposed in the patent to Culpeper and Arlington with
"unspeakable grief and astonishment." Was the royal donor

the man for whom they had stood up so stoutly and so loyally
in an hour when he had been abandoned by all his other subjects?
The King was fully aware of their fidelity to his cause
at the blackest crisis of its history, and yet he did not hesitate
to alter the form of the Colony's government without consulting
their interests or their wishes, just as if they were so
many slaves or children.

The patentees in this monstrous document were empowered
to establish new counties and new parishes; to induct clergymen
in case of vacancies in old or newly erected pulpits; to
fill every important office, from the governorship of the Colony
to the county clerkship; to issue patents to the public lands;
and to collect the quitrents, fines, and duties. All the functions
which had belonged to the crown under royal rule, and many
which had belonged to the governor, were gathered up and
made over to court favorites, whose worthless characters were
sufficiently proved by their intimacy with their profligate
sovereign.

This grant was made in 1673. The General Assembly, at
a heavy public expense, sent off agents to England to petition
for its revocation, and also to obtain a permanent charter in
its place. Arlington and Culpeper finally consented to surrender
their supposed rights. The other purposes which the
commissioners, Smith, Ludwell, and Parke, were expected to
accomplish were to secure a guarantee: (1) that no grant to
the territory of Virginia should be made thereafter without
any hearing beforehand by its people; (2) that no taxation
should be imposed in opposition to the General Assembly's
wishes; and (3) that the Colony should be dependent directly
on the crown. It is probable that the entire appeal of the
commissioners would have been successful had not the insurrection
of 1676 occurred before it could be acted upon by the
English Government. In April of that memorable year, the
King had instructed the Lord Chancellor to attach the Great
Seal to the new patent of incorporation which had been drafted
by the law officers of the crown; but, unfortunately for Virginia,

this consummation was never reached, in consequence
of the confusing reports of commotions in the Colony which
arrived from Jamestown.[2]

The unavoidable delay in procuring the desired charter had
caused much popular discontent in Virginia, as it was anticipated
that the tax which had been imposed to cover the
expenses of the three commissioners in England would after
all not lead to the wished-for result. A levy by the poll had
also been laid to provide the fund for the purchase of the
rights under the patent to the Northern Neck; but this burden,
as it turned out, was undertaken for nothing, since the region
remained under a separate proprietorship down to the Revolution.
Berkeley asserted that it was by his personal influence
with the people at large that at least two incipient mutinies
had been quieted before they could become general. Agitators
had gone about whispering in the ears of the dissatisfied
citizens that the tobacco had not been levied really for the
acquisition of a charter and the revocation of the Hopton and
Arlington patents, but simply to put gratuitous sums into
the pockets of a few greedy planters.