e colony having banished gold and silver from the colony.[510:A] The
consequence of this state of things was that a failure in the crop
involved the people in general distress; for by law if the salaries of
the clergy and the fees of officers were not paid in tobacco by the
tenth day of April, the property of delinquents was liable to be
distrained, and if not replevied within five days, to be sold at
auction. Were they to be exposed to cruel imposition and exactions; to
have their estates seized and sacrificed, "for not complying with laws
which Providence had made it impossible to comply with? Common sense, as
well as common humanity, will tell you that they are not, and that it is
impossible any instruction to a governor can be construed so contrary to
the first principles of justice and equity, as to prevent his assent to
a law for relieving a colony in a case of such general distress and
calamity."[510:B] Sherlock, Bishop of London, in his letter to the lords
of trade and plantations, denounced the act of 1758, as binding the
king's hands, and manifestly tending to draw the people of the
plantations from their allegiance to the king. It was replied, on the
other hand, that if the Virginians could ever entertain the thought of
withdrawing from their dependency on England, nothing could be more apt
to bring about such a result than the denying them the right to protect
themselves from distress and calamity in so trying an emergency. In the
year when this relief act was passed, many thousands of the colonists
did not make one pound of tobacco, and if all of it raised in the
colony had been divided among the tithables, "they would not have had
two hundred pounds a man to pay the taxes, for the support of the war,
their levies and other public dues, and to provide a scanty subsistence
for themselves and families;" and "the general assembly were obliged to
issue money from the public funds to keep the people from starving." The
act had been denounced as treasonable; but were the legislature to sit
with folded arms, silent and inactive, amid the miseries of the people?
"This would have been treason indeed,--treason against the
state,--against the clemency of the royal majesty." Many landlords and
civil officers were members of the assembly in 1758, and their fees and
rents were payable in tobacco; nevertheless, they cheerfully promoted
the enactment of a measure by which they were to suffer great losses.
The royal prerogati