Philip Alexander Bruce

“ It is not surprising that in a great crisis like the American Revolution, when sufficient time had passed for Virginia to produce a population racy of her own soil, and moulded by her own material conditions, there should have sprung up a body of men of exalted merit in those departments of human affairs in which her general system was most calculated to develop talent, the sphere of military action and the sphere of statesmanship. The large plantations, by giving birth to a class of great landowners, increased the importance of leaders in the community. ”

“ So great was the confidence of Bullock in the success of the English farmer who, would emigrate from his native country, to become a planter in Virginia, that he thought it proper to warn all who entertained such an intention, against that inflation of mind which follows the acquisition of riches, and to urge upon them in anticipation of the certain good fortune to which they would attain in the Colony, to hold Providence always in remembrance, as the cause of their happy condition. ”

“ To promote or allow the growth of the manufacturing spirit in the Colony was as dangerous as to refuse to interfere with the exercise on the part of its people of the right of absolute free trade. In time, they might not only meet their own needs as to manufactured goods, but also export such goods to countries where England now enjoyed a profitable market, a market which might soon grow unprofitable to her by rivalry with Virginian competitors, since the latter would possess the advantage of cheaper raw materials as the basis of their manufactures. ”

“ The fact is so; and these people of the Southern colonies are much more strongly and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty, than those to the Northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such were our Gothic ancestors; such in our days were the Poles; and such will be all masters of slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In such a people, the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it and renders it invincible. ”

“ Eighty years had now passed since the day on which the colonists for the first time had sowed wheat in the soil of Virginia, this being the earliest seed that was planted after possession was taken of Jamestown Island. What changes had agriculture in this interval produced upon the face of the country? If the descriptions of contemporaneous observers are deserving of credence, the Colony, even where its population was densest, bore the aspect of a wilderness, owing to the enormous disproportion between the area in cultivation and the area still in a state of nature. ”

“ If we omit from consideration the early delusions as to the existence of gold in Virginia in large quantities, delusions arising principally from the spirit of the times, which had been fostered by the extraordinary wealth of the southern continent in the precious metals, these reasons were worthy of that sober and enterprising race of men who were in the course of the following two hundred and eighty years to cover the surface of a great part of the globe with their colonies, and in doing so, to justify the magnificent description of one of the most splendid of modern orators. ”

“ An absence of great personalities was one of the most remarkable features of the history of Virginia in the seventeenth century after the dissolution of the Company. Nathaniel Bacon alone stands out upon that vast background in the proportions of an extraordinary man, but he was an Englishman and not a Virginian. It should be remembered that great men of action are the products of critical times alone, for they require a motive and a stage. ”

“ The most powerful influences of the seventeenth century, the formative age in the history of Virginia, tended directly, as has been seen, to the creation of great estates in land. At the present day, the most powerful influences tend directly to the disintegration of the system of large plantations, and this is observed even in those parts of the State where the population is compelled to rely principally upon tobacco for a subsistence. A virgin soil is no longer necessary to the production of that plant in perfection, artificial manures being now used in preparing land for its culture. ”

“ Descended from the race of Englishmen, indeed, in many instances born under English skies themselves, the Virginians of the seventeenth century led a life, in consequence of the independent and manly existence permitted by the plantation system, that confirmed all the great qualities which had formed a part of their moral inheritance as scions of the English stock. It was a life that allowed the individuality of each planter to expand without obstacle. ”

“ The great wood fires, which cast such a cheerful glow about the different apartments of his home, must have done much to promote the contentment of all who entered into his family circle. In the mother country, throughout the seventeenth century, the forests steadily diminished, and wood for household use, in consequence, became dearer in value; the difference in Virginia in this particular must have impressed all emigrants from England to the Colony, where firewood was the cheapest of the more important materials entering into the domestic economy. ”

“ According to the Indian conception, there was a heaven beyond the western mountains and close to the setting sun, which was an abode where kings, werowances, and priests, who alone after death were admitted to its portals, were always singing and dancing, with their hair decorated with feathers of varied and brilliant hues, their bodies anointed with oil and painted with puccoon, and an inexhaustible quantity of beads, hatchets, copper, and tobacco forever near at hand. ”

“ This was the opinion of men who had resided in the Colony for many years, and enjoyed the fullest opportunity of observing the operation of the local system of agriculture. The wastefulness of slave labor, which has always been considered to be the most serious drawback attached to it as compared with free labor, was of smaller importance in that age than when the whole area of Virginia had been divided into separate plantations, and the extent of the untouched soil had become limited to a degree demanding more skilful and more careful methods in the cultivation of the ground. ”

“ The excessive demands had their origin not so much in the exorbitant spirit of the keepers of ordinaries as in the limited character of the local custom, and the great danger of depreciation in the leaf offered in payment. The rate fixed upon by law for a single meal, fifteen pounds for a master and ten for a servant, was very high, as fifteen pounds of tobacco at this time would bring, if its quality was good, not less than five shillings in modern English currency, which appears remarkable in a country distinguished for an extraordinary abundance of provisions. ”

“ It is that in Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any pan of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment but a kind of rank and privilege. ”

“ To inquire into the origin of the planters of Virginia in the seventeenth century would be to enter into a domain which is more distinctly a part of social than economic history. Such an inquiry was justified in the case of servants because they bore the same practical relation to the community as the ordinary beast of burden, only tempered by their human intelligence, which led to their receiving more conscientious treatment from their masters. ”

“ In 1619, at the moment when the settlers were beginning to feel the first beneficent effects of a milder government, twenty Africans were disembarked from a Dutch privateer, presumably at Jamestown, as the place where a market was most readily found for a cargo of laborers. The ill-fated vessel, which was destined to earn by this single act in its career a sinister immortality in history, was sailing under letters of marque from the Prince of Orange, and had been cruising in the Spanish Main for the purpose of capturing Spanish prizes. ”

“ There were a number of reasons which gave tobacco a superiority over all the other commodities of Virginia, and rendered ultimately abortive every effort to divert the attention of the planters to the production of maize and wheat, wine and silk. The general economic tendencies of a people are never founded upon mere wilfulness, but upon a just appreciation of their immediate interests as controlled by their physical surroundings. ”

“ They could in time rise to a high position in that class if they had energy and ability, or could, if they themselves were lacking in these qualities, transmit the right to rise to their descendants, either immediate or remote. The complete homogeneity of the community was not affected by the presence of the white servant; in that servant the community possessed the most admirable instrument for the eradication of the primæval forest, the supreme task of the colonial age, because he was just as thoroughly and directly in the power of his master as the negro slave himself ”

“ Nevertheless, even from an economic point of view, it is important to know that the great body of men who sued out patents to public lands in Virginia were sprung from the portion of the English commonwealth that was removed from the highest as well as from the lowest ranks in the community, and which, while in many instances sharing the blood of the noblest, yet as a rule belonged to the classes engaged in the different professions and trades, in short, to the workers in all of the principal branches of English activity. ”

“ Where is our ancient might and power? Where is that great reputation sleeping now that we won so few years ago? Let not the world be deceived, we are the same now we were then, and they would soon see it if they were to give us a chance, since with the blessing of God we are more powerful now than we were then, those parts being now enclosed and in good order which at that time were open. Our plant has taken root, the branches are green and very desirous to spread out. ”

“ I have already pointed out that one of the strongest motives which entered into the earliest English enterprises looking to colonization of that vast extent of country known as Virginia, was the hope that this new country would furnish homes for the overflowing population of England, and thus relieve the parishes of men and women who, however willing to work, were unable to find employment, and who were, therefore, compelled to rely in part at least upon the charity of others for subsistence. ”

“ The commonwealth was not only more able to hold and defend a colony which it had erected, but it was also in a more favorable position to promote the interests of such a community. The room for employment in a settlement established and sustained by the State was far greater for persons of high rank than if it owed its existence and advancement to a few persons. A public fund, in prescribing the limit of individual investment, diminished the chance of heavy individual losses in carrying through all enterprise which had colonization in view. ”

“ Tradition and habit doubtless brought to bear a strong influence in the subsequent history of Virginia to promote the cultivation of tobacco, but in the beginning it was an economic necessity, and in no small degree it continued to be such. If the climate and soil had been unsuitable to the growth of the plant, the advance of the Colony in the beginning would have been slower, confirming the remark of Lord Bacon, that a plantation should not be expected to become self-sustaining until a generation, or even a longer period of time had elapsed. ”

“ By far the most remarkable of the birds discovered in Virginia, and recognized as such in the beginning, was the mocking-bird. It was an object of wonder and admiration to the early adventurers, and it continued to excite the same emotions in later generations as the jester and comedian among birds. The mocking-bird has always shown a strong disposition to build its nest near dwellings, haunting the surrounding trees and shrubbery, and it doubtless exhibited the same preference for the vicinity of the Indian wigwams before the arrival of the English colonists. ”

“ In the matter of apparel, as in the other interests of their private lives and of the community at large, the colonists looked upon themselves as constituting just as much a part of the mother country in its social and economic habits as if no ocean rolled between Virginia and England. ”

“ Sir George Peckham, writing about 1583 on the subject of Western Plantations, had anticipated this argument in his declaration that if a colony were established by the English in America, employment would not only be created for a great number of men who passed their time in idleness, and were burdensome to the community in which they lived, but also for children under fourteen years of age, and for women who had no honorable means of support. The men might be engaged in working mines and in cultivating the fields, and the women in gathering cotton and spinning hemp. ”