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