would
have been imposed upon by the Mississippi or South-Sea, or any other
such monstrous Bubbles."[36]

And this evidence is corroborated fully by letters of Virginia
planters to English merchants. They show that the wealthy Virginian of
the 17th century was careful in his business dealings, sharp in a
bargain, a painstaking manager, and in his private life often
economical even to stinginess. Robert Carter, one of the wealthiest
men of the colony, in a letter complains of the money spent upon the
outfit of the Wormley boys who were at school in England, thinking it
"entirely in excess of any need." William Fitzhugh, Philip Ludwell,
William Byrd I, typical leaders of their time, by the mercantile
instinct that they inherited from their fathers were enabled to build
up those great estates which added such splendor to the Virginia
aristocracy of the 18th, century.[37]

Having, as we hope, sufficiently shown that the leading planters of
Virginia were not in any large measure the descendants of Englishmen
of high social rank, and that with them the predominant instinct was
mercantile, we shall now proceed to point out those conditions to
which the planters were subjected that changed them from practical
business men to idealistic and chivalrous aristocrats.

Undoubtedly the most powerful influence that acted upon the character
of the Virginian was the plantation system. In man's existence it is
the ceaseless grind of the commonplace events of every day life that
shapes the character. The most violent passions or the most stirring
events leave but a fleeting impression in comparison with the effect
of one's daily occupation. There is something distinctive about the
doctor, the teacher, the tailor, the goldsmith. There is in each
something different from the rest of mankind, and this something has
been developed within him by the ceaseless recurrence of certain
duties required of him by his profession. Similarly the English
immigrant, isolated upon his vast plantation, surrounded by slaves and
servants, his time occupied largely with the cultivation of tobacco,
could not fail in the course of time to lose his mercantile instincts
and to become distinctly aristocratic in his nature.

The estates of the planters were very large, comprising frequently
thousands of acres. William Byrd II inherited from his father 23,231
acres, but so great was his hunger for land and so successful was he
in obtaining it that at his death h