The Recorder

FROM THE BALANCE.
THE
EXCHANGE OF TOBACCO
FOR WOMEN.

Virginia, so named, in honor of Elizabeth the virgin queen of England was the eldest sister among the British American colonies; and she has never been scrupulous in claiming from her younger sisters, the full amount of respect and homage, that belongs to her seniority. The first effective settlement of this "Ancient Dominion," as Virginia has been called, was in the year 1609; thirteen years before the settlement of Plymouth in New-England. The emigrants came over to Virginia, not by pairs, as the creatures went into the Ark, but without wives and families; and were mere adventurers in quest of wealth, who determined as soon as their fortunes should be made, to return to England. As this determination, carried into effect, might have been fatal to the colony, Sir Edwin Sandys, in order to attach the colonists to the soil and prevent their return, advised the proprietors in England to send them over a cargo of young women and exchange these necessaries of life for tobacco. This prudent advice was followed; and accordingly in the year 1619, ninety girls were let to the Virginia planters at one time. A freight of sixty more was sent the next year. A species of commerce so highly advantageous was not declined by the planters. The love of women in uninstance, completely triumphed over sordid avarice, insomuch that files of gallant Virginians were to be seen, carrying down to the ship with a hasty step their bundles of tobacco, and after making the exchange, conducting home their dear spouses. At first the value of a wife was estimated at one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco; but as the sale of this precious commodity was rapid, the price soon rose to an hundred and fifty pounds. Indeed it reflects no small degree of honor upon the generosity of the gallantry of the planters, that they should voluntarily give such prices for their wives: especially when it is considered that king James of England, who was so bitter an enemy to smoking, that with his own royal hand he wrote a book against it, had prohibited the Virginians from raising tobacco beyond the annual quantity of one hundred pounds each. Under these circumstances, the purchase of a wife must have cost a planter fifty per cent more than his whole tobacco crop, for a single year.

It would seem that some of the planters were under the necessity of purchasing their wives on credit; and in order to prevent evasions of payment, which otherwise might likely have happened, especially if they found themselves cheated in their bargain, the general assembly enacted, that "the price of a wife should have the precedence of all other debts, in recovery and payment, because (says the assembly) of all kinds of merchandize, this was the most desirable." In fact, though bona fide debts have not always been recoverable by law in Virginia; yet, in this instance of "the most desirable kind of merchandize." the legislature, much to its honor, solemnly ordained that, in case of the purchase of a wife on credit, the purchaser should pay the tobacco, even to the last ounce, that he had contracted to give for her.

The memory of such a remarkable piece of history as I have been relating, ought, I think, to be perpetuated by some public monument. As wool is the staple of Britain and the prime source of its wealth it has been a custom, time out of mind, for the first lord of the treasury to sit upon a wool sack: and with equal if not greater propriety, might the speaker of the Virginia assembly be seated upon a sack of tobacco; seeing this odoriferous plant has not only been the staple of commerce in the ancient dominion, but also the basis of population.