fifty shillings a thousand, a hamper of canary being thrown in. At a later date, Fitzhugh transported six thousand two hundred and forty articles of the same kind to Barbadoes.2 At still another time, he proposed to send to his merchant in London ten thousand, and expressed himself as ready to dispatch, if a fair profit could be secured, as many as seventy thousand trunnels. In 1690, John Waugh of York gave a note to William Sedgwick, promising to deliver on a designated day, fourteen thousand pipe-staves, which were now valued at two pounds and ten shillings a thousand. Notes of this character were not uncommon, and they were frequently causes of suit.1 Pitch and tar were produced in Virginia in small quantities during the administration of the Company, several Poles having been sent out to the Colony for that purpose. It was proposed that a number of apprentices should be set to learn the art of this manufacture under the foreigners.5 There is no evidence that these articles were made on a scale of importance in the subsequent history of the Colony, although England was compelled throughout this period to import large quantities from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.6 In 1698, the only place where pitch and tar were produced in Virginia in a considerable quantity was in Elizabeth City County. The amount did not exceed twelve hundred barrels 1 Letters of William Fitzhugh, May 22, 1683. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., June 5, 1682. 4 Records of York County, vol. 1687-1691, p. 448, Va. State Library; Records of Lower Norfolk County, original vol., orders Sept. 19, 1694. Boards and staves were sometimes the consideration in the purchase of land. See Records of Lower Norfolk County, original vol. 1695–1703, f. p. 103. 5 Abstracts of Proceedings of the Virginia Company of London, vol. I, p. 17. 6 Anderson's History of Commerce, vol. III, p. 2. annually, knots of old pine trees being the material used.1 Barrels of tar were from an early period very frequently included in the inventories of estates in Lower Norfolk County, and the entries of this form of property increased in a very notable degree in the last five years of the century. This commodity became an important consideration in the transfer of titles to land; in some instances, it was offered in part payment and in others in whole. There were also fitful attempts to manufacture potashes. In several cases, samples were shipped to England, but at no time did the production of this commodity develop into an important industry.3 It sold for about 7s. 6d. a barrel.4 1 British State Papers, Colonial, Virginia B. T., vol. II, B. 17. “In obedience to his excellency's the Governor's letter, this court having taken the same into consideration, doe returne for answer that there never was any quantitys of pitch and tar made in this county nor is there any quantity of pine to make the same." Records of Middlesex County, original vol. 1694-1705, p. 222. 2 Records of Lower Norfolk County, original vol. 1675-1686, f. p. 83; Ibid, original vol. 1695-1703, f. p. 103. 3 Governor Harvey to Privy Council, October, 1630, British State Papers, Colonial, No. 5; McDonald Papers, vol. II, p. 45, Va. State Library. 4 Records of Lower Norfolk County, original vol. 1695-1703, p. 2. CHAPTER XIX MONEY THE history of Virginia in the seventeenth century furnishes perhaps the most interesting instance in modern times of a country established upon the footing of an organized and civilized community, with an ever-growing number of inhabitants and an ever-enlarging volume of trade, yet compelled to have recourse to a method of exchange which seems especially characteristic of peoples still lingering in the barbarous or semi-barbarous state. From 1607 to 1700, the period upon which I am dwelling, a period covering an interval of ninety-three years, in the course of which the small band of colonists who disembarked at Jamestown in the spring of 1607 increased from a few hundred persons to many thousands, a period in which the unbroken forest east of the falls in the rivers flowing into the Chesapeake Bay was in large part cut down and the soil dug up and planted in tobacco, wheat, and maize, the financial system of Virginia was in principal measure based upon exchange in its crudest and simplest form. An agricultural product was given for a manufactured, or a manufactured product for an agricultural. Coin, which is just as much of a commodity as an agricultural or manufactured article, circulated in Virginia only in small quantities, even after nine decades had passed since the foundation of the Colony. Tobacco was the standard of value at the very time that the whole community was engaged in planting it. It was the money in which all the supplies, both domestic and imported, were purchased; in which the tax imposed by the public levy was settled; in which the tithables of the minister, the fees of the attorney and the physician, the debts due the merchant, the remuneration of the free mechanic, the wages of the servant, the charges of the midwife and the grave-digger were paid. In no similar instance has an agricultural product entered so deeply and so extensively into the spirit and framework of any modern community. It was to the Colony what the potato has been to Ireland, the coffee-berry to Brazil, the grape to France, and corn to Egypt; and it was also something more. It was, as it were, at once an agricultural and a metallic commodity, which, owing to the perverse taste of mankind, was as valuable in itself as the potato, the coffee-berry, the grape, the grain of wheat, and at the same moment as precious as gold or silver and more precious than iron. It was as if men had substituted the barns in their yards for purses in their pockets. The universal use into which tobacco came as currency, arose, not from the preference of the settlers, but by the force of circumstances which they could not have controlled even if they had wished to. In the beginning, there was no need for a medium of exchange. It was the exchange only which was wanted. Virginia raised tobacco to barter for English clothing, tools, utensils, and implements that were indispensable to the people, and which they themselves could not at that early period manufacture. The Magazine established in 1616, the contents of which were delivered by the Cape Merchant to the planters in return for tobacco, could only have maintained its existence in a country in which the original principle of trade was operating on account of the poverty of that country or its infancy as an organized community. The buyer and seller simply exchanged articles. The buyer was a seller and the seller a buyer at the same moment. There was no occasion for the passage of a single coin from one to the other. As the population enlarged, and the volume of exported tobacco and imported merchandise increased, the demand for coin in the transfer of the great agricultural product of Virginia for the manufactured goods of England remained in proportion to the extent of the transaction almost as small. The principle governing it continued to be in its essence the same. The Virginians still desired to procure English commodities, the English merchants were still anxious to obtain the staple of the Colony. It was not necessary for the Virginian landowner to transport his crops to the West Indies to secure articles to be disposed of in England for coin to be used in the purchase of English goods, as was the case with the farmer of New England in selling his grain and other provisions. The Magazine set up at Jamestown during the administration of the Company was in later periods practically established upon each estate by an English or native merchant when he exchanged his imported goods for the planter's tobacco, still without the intervention of a single coin. The inconveniences of such a system were felt not in the operation of external trade, that is to say, in the barter of Virginian for English products or the reverse, but in the working of internal affairs, in the transactions of local business, for instance, in the sale of the commodity of labor and professional knowledge and the like. The peculiar character of the commercial relations existing in the seventeenth century between Virginia and England was precisely what had been desired as well as VOL. II, 2 K |