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as the charters of
Gilbert and of
Raleigh had contained
little but concessions, suited to invite those eminent men to engage with earnestness in the career of western discoveries, so the first charter for
Virginia ex-
pressly admitted strangers to trade with the colony on payment of a small discriminating duty.
1 On the enlargement of the company, the intercourse with for-
signers was still permitted; nor were any limits assigned to the commerce in which they might engage.
2 The last charter was equally free from unreasonable
restrictions on trade; and, by a confirmation of all former privileges, it permitted to foreign nations the traffic, which it did not expressly sanction.
3
At an early period of his reign, before
Virginia had
been planted, King James found in his hostility to the use of tobacco a convenient argument for the excessive tax which a royal ordinance imposed on its consumption.
4 When the weed had evidently become the staple of
Virginia, the Stuarts cared for nothing in the colony so much as for a revenue to be derived from an impost on its produce.
Whatever false display of zeal might be made for religion, the conversion of the heathen, the organization of the government, and the establishment of justice, the subject of tobacco was never forgotten.
The sale of it in
England was
strictly prohibited, unless the heavy impost had been paid;
5 a proclamation enforced the royal decree;
6 and, that the tax might be gathered on the entire consumption, by a new proclamation,
7 the culture of to-
bacco was forbidden in
England and
Wales, and the plants already growing were ordered to be uprooted.
