sly, and now the King, had urged upon the Virginians
a diversified industry and agriculture. But Englishmen in Virginia
had the familiar emigrant idea of making their fortunes. They had left
England; they had taken their lives in their hands; they had suffered
fevers, Indian attacks, homesickness, deprivation. They had come to
Virginia to get rich. Now clapboards and sassafras, pitch, tar, and pine
trees for masts, were making no fortune for Virginia shippers. How could
they, these few folk far off in America, compete in products of the
forest with northern Europe? As to mines of gold and silver, that first
rich vision had proved a disheartening mirage. "They have great hopes
that the mountains are very rich, from the discovery of a silver mine
made nineteen years ago, at a place about four days' journey from the
falls of James river; but they have not the means of transporting the
ore." So, dissatisfied with some means of livelihood and disappointed in
others, the Virginians turned to tobacco.

Every year each planter grew more tobacco; every year more ships were
laden. In 1628 more than five hundred thousand pounds were sent to
England, for to England it must go, and not elsewhere. There it must
struggle with the best Spanish, for a long time valued above the best
Virginian. Finally, however, James and after him Charles, agreed to
exclude the Spanish. Virginia and the Somers Islands alone might import
tobacco into England. But offsetting this, customs went up ruinously; a
great lump sum must go annually to the King; the leaf must enter only
at the port of London; so forth and so on. Finally Charles put forth his
proposal to monopolize the industry, giving Virginia tobacco the English
market but limiting its production to the amount which the Government
could sell advantageously. Such a policy required cooperation from the
colonists. The King therefore ordered the Governor to grant a Virginia
Assembly, which in turn should dutifully enter into partnership with
him--upon his terms. So the Virginia Assembly thus came back into
history. It made a "Humble Answere" in which, for all its humility, the
King's proposal was declined. The idea of the royal monopoly faded out,
and Virginia continued on its own way.

The General Assembly, having once met, seems of its own motion to have
continued meeting. The next year we find it in session at Jamestown, and
resolving "that we should go three severall marches upon the Indians, at