ard the development of England's most important American
province.[5-41] A drop in the rate of increase from 200 per cent during
the thirteen years prior to 1662, to 25 per cent in the thirteen years
following, is a clear index to the startling change brought about in the
colony by the British trade regulations.

These figures are the more significant in that there was no appreciable
slackening of the stream of servants. It is probable that in the period
from 1662 to 1675, which marked this estimated increase of 10,000
persons, fully 20,000 immigrants had come to the colony.[5-42] The
patent rolls for 1674 alone give the names of 1931 headrights, and this
year is by no means exceptional. No wonder Edward Randolph was
surprised at the smallness of the population and wrote to the Board of
Trade that it should be investigated why Virginia had not grown more,
"considering what vast numbers of servants and others had been
transported thither."[5-43]

But Randolph failed to realize that it is not the volume of immigration
but the number of people a country will support which in the end
determines the size of the population. It was not enough to pour into
the colony tens of thousands of poor settlers; opportunity had also to
be afforded them for earning an adequate living. And this opportunity,
because of the enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the consequent
ruin of trade, they did not have in Virginia. Throughout the Restoration
period not more than forty or fifty thousand people could exist upon the
returns from the tobacco crop, and beyond that the population could
hardly rise. If more poured in, they must of necessity live in misery
and rags, or migrate to other colonies where more favorable conditions
existed.

We are not at present concerned with what become of this surplus
population, but only with the fact that the Navigation Acts brought to a
dead halt the process of moulding freedmen and other poor settlers into
a prosperous yeomanry. By the year 1660 this class seems to have reached
its highest development, and had a rent roll of land owners been drawn
up at that date it would doubtless have shown almost as many names as
that of 1704. In fact it is fortunate that in the bitter years from 1660
to 1685 it did not succumb entirely. With the price of tobacco so low
that no profit was to be derived from it, with his family in rags, the
small planter might well have sold his land to his more wealthy neighbor
and jo