irginia, it is equally certain that
a great part of the early deportations thither were the sweepings of the
London streets and the leavings of the London stews. On what the heralds
call the spindle side, some, at least, of the oldest Virginian families
are descended from matrons who were exported and sold for so many
hogsheads of tobacco the head. So notorious was this, that it became one
of the jokes of contemporary playwrights, not only that men bankrupt in
purse and character were "food for the Plantations," (and this before
the settlement of New England,) but also that any drab would suffice to
wive such pitiful adventurers. "Never choose a wife as if you were going
to Virginia," says Middleton in one of his comedies. The mule is apt to
forget all but the equine side of his pedigree. How early the
counterfeit nobility of the Old Dominion became a topick of ridicule in
the Mother Country may be learned from a play of Mrs. Behn's, founded on
the Rebellion of Bacon: for even these kennels of literature may yield a
fact or two to pay the raking. Mrs. Flirt, the keeper of a Virginia
ordinary, calls herself the daughter of a baronet "undone in the late
rebellion,"--her father having in truth been a tailor,--and three of the
Council, assuming to themselves an equal splendour of origin, are shown
to have been, one "a broken exciseman who came over a poor servant,"
another a tinker transported for theft, and the third "a common
pickpocket often flogged at the cart's-tail." The ancestry of South
Carolina will as little pass muster at the Herald's Visitation, though I
hold them to have been more reputable, inasmuch as many of them were
honest tradesmen and artisans, in some measure exiles for conscience'
sake, who would have smiled at the high-flying nonsense of their
descendants. Some of the more respectable were Jews. The absurdity of
supposing a population of eight millions all sprung from gentle loins in
the course of a century and a half is too manifest for confutation. The
aristocracy of the South, such as it is, has the shallowest of all
foundations, for it is only skin-deep,--the most odious of all, for,
while affecting to despise trade, it traces its origin to a successful
traffick in men, women, and children, and still draws its chief revenues
thence. And though, as Doctor Chamberlayne says in his _Present State
of England_, "to become a Merchant of Foreign Commerce, without
serving any Apprentisage, hath been allowed