planter or the merchant, it would be soon seen that the former was more often the victim than the latter, and that his necessities were used to force him into bargains in which he alone suffered. The English authorities seem to have thought at this time that the Virginians were in much more danger from the Dutch in their commercial intercourse with that people than the Dutch were from the Virginians. The colonists were warned in a solemn document sent over by the Government that the Hollanders were seeking to make a prey of their tobacco by securing it at rates of exchange highly extortionate. It was pointed out that one of the worst evils of the exclusive devotion of the planters to that commodity was that it forced them to look to the Dutch in large part for their supplies, England not furnishing a sufficient market for the whole quantity produced, a fact of which the Dutch took advantage. The Governor and Council were ordered to put a stop to all trade with the Low Countries except in a time of great distress, and even in such a period, when a Dutch ship, after disposing of its cargo, left the Colony loaded down with tobacco, a bond was to be required of its master that he should proceed to London with his vessel for the purpose of paying the customs, after which he was to be permitted to continue his voyage to Holland.[1] An injunction to the same effect was inserted in the instructions given to Wyatt when he became Governor in 1638,[2] and it was repeated in the instructions to Berkeley in 1641.[3] There was quite probably an irresistible disposi-
- ↑ British State Papers, Colonial, vol. IX, No. 47; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1637, p. 193, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Colonial Entry Book, vol. 79, pp. 219-236; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1638, p. 49, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Instructions to Berkeley, McDonald Papers, vol. I, p. 388, Va. State Library. See, also, for these Instructions, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. II, p. 280.
