CHAPTER XV

MANUFACTURED SUPPLIES: FOREIGN

I.

IN preceding chapters I have referred in detail to the different supplies which were needed for use or consumption by people of all classes in the seventeenth century. Where and how were these supplies obtained? When not mere natural products, to what extent had they been manufactured at home or abroad? The most common varieties of food were in most cases of the growth of the soil of the Colony. We have seen that the main subsistence of the slave, the servant, and the master was principally drawn from the plantation itself; the meats, the vegetables, the flour, the meal, and, in large measure, the fermented liquors which were so freely indulged in, were produced in Virginia. A considerable proportion of the articles of food to be found on the tables of persons of wealth was not secured from their own estates, but had been imported from abroad. This was still more the case with the innumerable articles which made up the household goods of the individual planter, and, in a lesser degree, of the implements employed in tilling the ground. Many of these articles were manufactured, as will be hereafter shown, in the Colony, but the greater number had been brought in by local or foreign merchants, or by the landowners at their own expense.

The importation of English merchandise into Virginia in the seventeenth century for the purpose of meeting the wants of its inhabitants had something more than a local significance. It was the beginning of that vast colonial trade which has performed so momentous a part in increasing the wealth of England, and giving her an undisputed supremacy among commercial nations. Almost from the foundation of the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia was an important dependence of the mother country, not only as a land to which those who desired to establish new homes could emigrate, but as a community which, as its population expanded, required an ever enlarging volume of artificial supplies. Its steady growth signified a proportionate advance in many branches of English manufacture. With the progress of time, the importance of all the Colonies as places where English goods could be disposed of at a profit, was more clearly recognized, and the benefit that would result to English trade from the exclusion of competition, foreign or domestic, from this field, was one of the principal influences which led to the passage of the Navigation laws, as well as to the prohibition of colonial manufacture on a large scale. As early as 1664, when the second Act of Navigation had been in operation only a few years, the merchandise imported into Virginia and Maryland was thought to be worth annually £200,000, a sum equal in purchasing power, perhaps, to four or five millions of dollars in our modern currency. At the beginning of the Revolution, a hundred and twelve years later, the value of the goods shipped from England each year to her Colonies in North America was estimated at £2,732,036, a small amount in comparison with the value of the goods imported at the present time by the United States from the same country

1 Archives of Maryland, Proceedings of Council, vol. 1636–1667, p. 504.

under a restrictive tariff, but in that age representing an enormous volume of trade.1

Previous to the issue of patents to associations of private adventurers in 1616, the cost of the transportation of supplies to the settlers in Virginia was borne entirely by the London Company or its members, to whom fell whatever profit was to be acquired from the sale of the commodities of the Colony. In the beginning, the expense was met by the Company alone, and from the fund which had been subscribed by the different adventurers who had united themselves under the letters patent obtained by Gates and his associates in 1606. How large was this fund and how great were the individual subscriptions, there are now no means of ascertaining. That the general amount was of notable proportions is to be inferred from the size of the first expedition, and the number of supplies following previous to the grant of the second charter in 1609. The same rule was adopted in the case of the London Company, when it was formed, as in the case of other organizations of similar character; the adventurer wrote opposite to his name the figures of such a sum as he was prepared to risk, and his profits were to be in proportion to it. Under the regulations laid down for the government of the Colony, the trade during the first five years was to be confined to three stocks at the most. All supplies purchased with the money contributed were transported thither as the property of the subscribers as a body. The commodities to be obtained from Virginia, whether in exchange with the Indians or as the product of the industry of the settlers, were to be returned to England

1 Report of a Committee of the Privy Council on the Trade of Great Britain with United States, 1791.

2 Instructions for the Government of the Colonies, Brown's Genesis of the United States, p. 71.

for sale, and the proceeds divided among the adventurers in proportion to their shares. The power was given to the persons named in the charter of 1606, to arrest all who were found engaged in traffic with the inhabitants, and to detain them if they were English subjects until they had paid two and a half per cent of the goods in which they had been trading, and if they were citizens of foreign states, five per cent.1 Supervision of the articles to be conveyed to the Colony was, by the formal provisions for its government, to be assumed by a committee to be constituted of not less than three members, who were instructed to reside in or near London, or at any other place preferred by the Company. A careful account was to be kept by this committee of the various kinds of merchandise which should be exported. During a period of seven years, goods to be used for apparel, food, or defence, or for the necessary objects of the plantation, transported from England to Virginia, were to be exempted from all manner of custom and subsidy. For the purpose of preventing an abuse of this valuable privilege by persons who had no real intention of sending the articles which they professed to be exporting thither, but who only wished to escape from the duties imposed upon those who had foreign destinations in view, it was provided that if any one should take advantage of this clause in the charter to evade the customs which they ought properly to pay, and after getting out to sea, direct their course to a land under foreign dominion, not only was the whole cargo to be forfeited, but the vessel in which it was conveyed was to be confiscated. The object of the charter was violated even if the commodities thus designed for an alien country had first been carried into Virginia in order to comply with

1 Charter of 1606, § XIII, Brown's Genesis of the United States, pp. 59-61.

the letter of the law. The goods exported from England by the Company were, as soon as they reached the Colony, to be stored in a magazine, from which they could be drawn for distribution only upon the warrant of the President and Council, or the Cape Merchant and two clerks who were in immediate charge of the goods. Of the latter trio of officers, the Cape Merchant, as his name discloses, was the chief. He was also the Treasurer of the Colony.1 In the beginning, it was his duty merely to preserve and guard the contents of the magazine, whether imported from England or produced by the labors of the inhabitants. It was not until a modified right of holding private property was granted that he became an agenţ in exchanging the goods of the Company or of private adventurers, for the commodities owned by the settlers. Previous to this, he was virtually a mere supercargo. The Cape Merchant was elected to fill the position which he occupied only for twelve months, but he was permitted to be a candidate for reëlection, his reëlection resting with the President and Council. At the time he was chosen, two clerks were also selected, and they remained, like the Cape Merchant, in office for a period of one year, their position being attended by less responsibility. They also could be reëlected. It was the duty of one of the clerks to keep a book in which all the supplies distributed were to be entered, and he as well as his associate could be suspended or removed by the President and Council, or by a majority of the body which they formed.

In the orders in Council drawn up for the guidance of the persons in charge of the expedition of 1607, the preservation and the supervision of the different articles to be conveyed to Virginia was imposed upon Captain

1 Instructions for the Government of the Colonies, Brown's Genesis of the United States, p. 72.