 | CHAPTER XLV History of Virginia |  |
CHAPTER XLV
DINWIDDIE'S ADMINISTRATION—CIVIL EVENTS
During the progress of these remarkable events, the Colony
of Virginia had declined to cast her vote in favor of that
union of all the British communities in America, which Benjamin
Franklin, with continental vision, had so earnestly
advocated in an intercolonial conference which had been held
at Albany. The suggestion seems to have been approved
by Dinwiddie, but disapproved by the Assembly. Dinwiddie
had already proposed to the English Government that the
area of all the colonies should be divided into a Northern
district and a Southern district; and that each of these two
districts should have the right to call together annually a
representative body, whose duty should be to direct and overlook
the affairs of that district.
It was a salient characteristic of these times that the
attitude of the Virginians towards the importation of slaves
grew more and more repugnant. The Assembly, from 1723
to 1759, laid a gradually increasing duty on each head. At
first, this duty amounted to five per cent ad valorem, but, in
the course of the French and Indian war, it advanced to
twenty per cent. In order to make the tax really prohibitive,
a bill was submitted to raise it to as much as twenty pounds
sterling a head; but the governor, under instructions from the
Board of Trade, vetoed this bill, as the consummation of a
policy that was not to be tolerated. The Virginians deprecated
the introduction of more slaves—first, because by
augmenting the volume of the production of tobacco, it tended
to lower the price of the commodity permanently; and, second,
the great number of bondsmen already in the Colony was a
of their rising against their masters. But the Board of Trade
opposed all the Assembly's measures of safety or expediency
bearing on this vital interest, because, with that body, the
prosperity of the African Company and of British shipping
enjoyed the superior consideration; and in its judgment, this
prosperity was certain to be damaged by a decline, for any
reason, in the importation of slaves.
Not infrequently, the authorities in Virginia were not in
a mood to accept the dictation of the English Government
and openly expressed their opposition to it. When, in 1755,
the Privy Council ordered the transmission of one thousand
pounds sterling to South Carolina to aid in its defense against
an Indian assault—that sum to be appropriated out of the
fund already accumulated from the export duty on tobacco—
the council at Williamsburg firmly protested, on the ground
that this fund had been collected for the benefit of the government
in Virginia, and that it would be illegal to divert it
to the use of another colony. Moreover, they added, it would
require the General Assembly's approval before it could be
distributed even for a valid purpose. Richard Corbin, the
receiver-general of the Colony, and Hanbury, his agent in
London, in accord with instructions which they had received,
refused to honor the draft which was drawn on the fund for
the amount demanded. The Privy Council was keenly offended
by this action, for, in ordering it, the council at Williamsburg,
they said, had deliberately disputed a right which the Privy
Council undoubtedly possessed as a body sitting as the king's
representative. Moreover, that body thought that it was
shortsighted conduct on the part of the council in Williamsburg
to question the propriety of an appropriation which was
really designed as much for the protection of Virginia as
for the protection of South Carolina.
To accentuate still more sharply their justifiable rebuke,
the Privy Council added, "that it was most unbecoming in
the Government of Virginia to sound the alarm on so trifling
when England was expending millions of pounds for the
defense of the colonies." This was an argument which was
to be heard again in the first mutterings of the Revolution,
and as little consideration was given to it then as was given
to it now in 1750.
| CHAPTER XLV History of Virginia | |