ir own growth in the proportion
of one to four, and sold it to other European nations. In this way they
sought to retain their position as a distributing center for the trade
and to give employment to hundreds of poor workers. In all the Dutch
seem to have purchased from England about 5,000 hogsheads a year.[7-17]

The enhanced importance of the tobacco trade is reflected in a steady
increase of British exports to Virginia and Maryland. The planters, now
that they found it possible to market their leaf, laid out the proceeds
in the manufactured products of England. At the end of the Seventeenth
century the two colonies were importing goods to the value of L200,000
annually. In 1698, which was an exceptionally good year, their purchases
were no less than L310,133.[7-18]

In short the tobacco colonies had at last found their proper place in
the British colonial system. Both they and the mother country, after
long years of experimentation, years of misfortune and recrimination,
had reached a common ground upon which to stand. Although Maryland and
Virginia still fell short of the ideal set for the British colonies,
although they failed to furnish the raw stuffs so urgently needed by the
home industries, at least they yielded a product which added materially
to shipping, weighed heavily in the balance of trade and brought a
welcome revenue to the royal Exchequer.

The Crown reaped a rich return from tobacco, a return which grew not
only with the expansion of the trade, but by the imposition from time to
time of heavier duties. In the period from 1660 to 1685, when the tariff
remained at two pence a pound, the yield must have varied from L75,000
to L100,000. If we assume that the average consumption in England was
9,000,000 pounds and the average exports 3,000,000 the total revenue
would have been L81,250. In 1685, however, an additional duty of three
pence a pound was placed upon tobacco upon its arrival in England, all
of which was refunded when the product was re-exported. In 1688, when
the tobacco consumed in England was 8,328,800 pounds, the old and new
duties, amounting in all to five pence, must have yielded L173,515. When
to this is added L15,000 from the half penny a pound on the 7,200,000
pounds of leaf sent abroad, the total reaches L188,515.

In 1698 still another penny a pound was added to the tax, making a grand
total of six pence on colonial tobacco disposed of in England. This new
duty, together with the r