TOBACCO LAWS OF THE OLD DOMINION with intent to cut or destroy the same . . . and being thereof lawfully convicted, shall be deemed, declared and adjudged to be traitors, and shall suffer pains of death, and also loose and forfeit as in case of high treason." While the penalties for violating the to bacco laws may seem at first glance need lessly severe, they were in fact mild enough compared with the ordinary penology of the times, when it is remembered that the laws regulating and protecting tobacco were the equivalent of the laws regulating and protecting the money of a country; that to increase the legal quantity or decrease the legal quality of tobacco, was tantamount to making and passing counterfeit money; and that to break into an enclosure or build ing for the purpose of destroying it, was in reality as grave an offense as it would now be to break into the United States Mint or rob the Treasury. The purchasing power of tobacco, in its monetary capacity, was put to its highest test at an early period in the history of the colony. In 1619, for the better content ment of the colonists, who were mostly young men without the ties of home and family, and to bind them more firmly to permanent settlement, there was sent out from England a cargo of assorted spinsters — "poor but respectable and incorrupt women" to furnish wives to such as would marry. They were sold to pay the expense of transportation at one hundred pounds of tobacco each. The experiment succeeded so well that the following year, another con signment was made of sixty young maids "of virtuous education, young, handsome, and well recommended." A wife out of this lot sold for one hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco. (Howes Hist, of Va., page 41.) Now Solomon had stated the price of a virtuous wife "as far above rubies," but how far above, and how many rubies not being stated, the valuation is vague. It has been shown, however, that her price was not above tobacco — that is, not above one
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hundred and fifty pounds of the "Virginia weed." The planting of tobacco being a privi lege, and intended to be, as far as legis lation could make it, an employment of more than ordinary profit; the granting or withholding the privilege, was often of the nature of a reward or punishment. Some Frenchmen who were brought into the colony about 1631, for the purpose of plant ing vineyards and instructing the colonists in the cultivation of the grape, for reasons best known to themselves, thought best to teach them how not to plant vineyards, and succeeded so well in the effort, that the Assembly was constrained to pass the follow ing punitive enactment : "Upon a remonstrance preferred to the assembly complaininge that the ffrenchmen who were about two years since transported into this country for the plantinge and dressinge of vynes, and to instruct others in the same, have willingly concealed the skill, and not only neglected to plant any vynes them selves but have also spoyled and ruinated that vyneard which was with great cost, planted by the charge of the late Company here; and notwithstanding have received all favour and encouragement thereunto, which hath disheartened all the inhabitants here, It is therefore ordered that the said ffrench men, together with their families be re strained and prohibited from planting to bacco, upon penaltie to forfeit their leases and imprisonment until they depart out of this colony." The office of clergyman, combining both civil and ecclesiastical duties, was doubly protected, both in the matter of support, and against animadversion in his minis terial capacity. It was enacted — 1624 — "That no man dispose of his tobacco before the minister be satisfied, upon paine of for feiture double his part of the ministers' means, and one man of every plantation to collect his means out of the first and best tobacco and corn." The vulgar custom of "passing the hat" during the time of divine
