[304] Smith, in Pinkerton, xiii., 51-55. "The account is fully contained in the oldest book printed in Virginia, in our Cambridge library. It is a thin quarto, in black letter, by John Smith, printed in 1608."—Bancroft's Hist. of the United States, vol. i., p. 132.
[305] In the year 1610, the South Virginian or London Company sealed a patent to Lord Delawarr, constituting him Governor and Captain-General of South Virginia. His name was given to a bay and river, and to the Indians who dwelt in the surrounding country, called in their own tongue Lenni-Lenape, which name signifies THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE. Lord Delawarr's health was ruined by the hardships and anxieties he was exposed to in Virginia, and he was obliged to return to England in little more than a year.
[306] Captain Smith says of Virginia, "that the number of felons and vagabonds did bring such evil character on the place, that some did choose to be hanged rather than go there, and were."—Graham's Rise and Progress of the United States, vol. i., p. 71.
"England adopted in the seventeenth century the system of transportation to her North American plantations, and the example was propagated by Cromwell, who introduced the practice of selling his political captives as slaves to the West Indians. But the number of regular convicts was too small, and that of free laborers too large, in the old provinces of North America, to have allowed this infusion of a convict population to produce much effect on the development of those communities, either in respect of their morals or their health.[307] Our own times are the first which have witnessed the phenomena of communities, in which the bulk of the working people consists of felons serving out the period of their punishment."—Merrivale, vol. ii., p. 3.
[307] It must be remembered that the crimes of the convicts were chiefly political. The number transported to Virginia for social crimes was never considerable—scarcely enough to sustain the sentiment of pride in its scorn of the laboring population—certainly not enough to affect its character.—Bancroft, vol. ii., p. 191.
[308] Stith's Hist. of Virginia, p. 167, 168; Chalmers's Annals of the United Colonies, p. 69.
[309] Stith's Hist. of Virginia, p. 307.
[310] It is asserted by Camden that tobacco was first brought into England by Mr. Ralph Lane, who went out as chief governor of Virginia in the first expedition commanded by Sir Richard Greenville. There can be little doubt that Lane was desired to import it by his master, Sir Walter Raleigh, who had seen it used in France during his residence there.—Camden, in Kennet, vol. ii., p. 509.
"There is a well-known tradition that Sir Walter first began to smoke it privately in his study, and the servant coming in with his tankard of ale and nutmeg, as he was intent upon his book, seeing the smoke issuing from his mouth, threw all the liquor in his face by way of extinguishing the fire, and, running down stairs, alarmed the family with piercing cries that his master, before they could get up, would be burned to ashes."—Oldy's Life of Raleigh, p. 74.
"King James declared himself the enemy of tobacco, and drew against it his royal pen. In the work which he entitled 'Counterblast to Tobacco,' he poured the most bitter reproaches on this 'vile and nauseous weed.' He followed it up by a proclamation to restrain 'the disorderly trading in tobacco,' as tending to a general and new corruption of both men's bodies and minds. Parliament also took the fate of this weed into their most solemn deliberation. Various members inveighed against it, as a mania which infested the whole nation; that plowmen took it at the plow; that it 'hindered' the health of the whole nation, and that thousands had died of it. Its warmest friends ventured only to plead that, before the final anathema was pronounced against it, a little pause might be granted to the inhabitants of Virginia and the Somer's Isles to find some other means of existence and trade. James's enmity did not prevent him from endeavoring to fill his coffers by the most enormous imposts laid upon tobacco, insomuch that the colonists were obliged for some time to send the whole into the ports of Holland. The government of New England, more consistently, passed a complete interdict against tobacco, the smoke of which they compared to that of the bottomless pit. Yet tobacco, like other proscribed objects, throve under persecution, and achieved a final triumph over all its enemies. Indeed, the enmity against it was in some respects beneficial to Virginia, as drawing forth the most strict prohibitions against 'abusing and misemploying the soil of this fruitful kingdom' to the production of so odious an article. After all, as the impost for an average of seven years did not reach a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, it could not have that mighty influence, either for good or evil, which was ascribed to it by the fears and passions of the age."—Chalmers. b. i., ch. iii., with notes. Massaire, p. 210. Wives, p. 197, quoted by Murray.