hibiting the exportation of stripped or stemmed tobacco was
complained of by the planters as causing a decline of the trade. They
undertook to enhance the value by improving its quality, and in July,
1732, sent John Randolph to lay their complaint before the crown.

With this accomplished and able man, afterwards knighted, and made
attorney-general, Governor Spotswood was engaged in an angry personal
controversy in the _Williamsburg Gazette_. The merits of the dispute
cannot now be ascertained. Spotswood claims to have been Randolph's
benefactor, and to have been the first to promote him in the world.

Virginia, notwithstanding some obstacles in the way of her trade,
continued to prosper, and from the year 1700 her population doubled in
twenty-five years. The New England Colonies improved still more. Colonel
Byrd said of them: "Though these people may be ridiculed for some
Pharisaical particularities in their worship and behavior, yet they were
very useful subjects, as being frugal and industrious, giving no scandal
or bad example, at least by any open and public vices. By which
excellent qualities they had much the advantage of the Southern Colony,
who thought their being members of the established church sufficient to
sanctify very loose and profligate morals. For this reason New England
improved much faster than Virginia, and in seven or eight years New
Plymouth, like Switzerland, seemed too narrow a territory for its
inhabitants."[415:A]

Boston, the principal town in the Anglo-American Colonies, founded in
1630, contained, in 1733, eight thousand houses and forty thousand
inhabitants; and its shipping and trade were already extensive.

In 1734 died John Holloway, Esq., who for thirty years had practised the
law with great reputation and success. He was for fourteen years speaker
of the house of burgesses, and eleven years treasurer. A native of
England, he had first served as a clerk, then went into the army in
Ireland early in the reign of King William the Third; next came to be
one of the attorneys of the Marshalsea Court; afterwards turned
projector, and being unfortunate, came over to Maryland, and thence
removed to Virginia. He is described by Sir John Randolph as more
distinguished for industry than for learning, and as relying more upon
the subtle artifice of an attorney, than the solid reasoning of a
lawyer. His opinions, however, were looked upon as authoritative; and
clients thought themselves fortunat