thought it worth their while to bring up their
children in the study of divinity; that they generally spent many years
of their lives at great expense in study, when their patrimony is pretty
well exhausted; and when in holy orders they cannot follow any secular
employment for the advancement of their fortunes, and may on that
account expect a more liberal provision."[509:A] Another relief act,
similar to that of 1755, fixing the value of tobacco at eighteen
shillings a hundred, was passed in 1758[509:B] upon a mere anticipation
of another scanty crop.[509:C] Burk[509:D] attributes the rise in the
price of tobacco to the arts of an extravagant speculator; but he cites
no authority for the statement, and the acts themselves expressly
attribute the scarcity, in 1755, to "drought," and in 1757 to
"unseasonableness of the weather."[509:E] The crop did fall short, and
the price rose extremely high; and contention ensued between the
planters and the clergy. The Rev. John Camm, rector of York Hampton
Parish, assailed the "Two Penny Act" in a pamphlet of that title, which
was replied to severally by Colonel Richard Bland and Colonel Landon
Carter. An acrimonious controversy took place in the _Virginia Gazette_;
but the cause of the clergy became at length so unpopular, that a
printer could not be found in Virginia willing to publish Camm's
rejoinder to Bland and Carter, styled the "Colonels Dismounted," and he
was obliged to resort to Maryland for that purpose. The colonels
retorted, and this angry dispute threw the colony into great excitement.
At last the clergy appealed to the king in council. By an act of
assembly passed as early as the year 1662, a salary of eighty pounds per
annum was settled upon every minister, "to be paid in the valuable
commodities of the country--if in tobacco, at twelve shillings the
hundred; if in corn, at ten shillings the barrel." In 1696 the salary of
the clergy was fixed at sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco, worth at
that time about eighty pounds. This continued to be the amount of their
stipends until 1731, when, the value of tobacco being raised, they
increased to about one hundred or one hundred and twenty pounds,
exclusive of their glebes and other perquisites. In Virginia, besides
the salaries of the clergy, the people had to bear parochial, county,
and public levies, and fees of clerks, sheriffs, surveyors, and other
officers, all of which were payable in tobacco, the paper currency of
th