in the colony.
These were the old planters, as they came to be called, whose rights
paralleled those of the old adventurers in England. It is evident that
the adventurers were in no position to claim a monopoly as the just
reward of their past sacrifices, for they also offered an immediate
dividend, on terms no different from those governing the rights of the
old adventurers, to any new adventurer who wished to join by paying L12
10s. per share. Such was the estate to which the Virginia Company had
been reduced after ten years of effort.

To employ a term that was destined to become common at a later period
of American history, the Virginia Company had become nothing more than
a land company. Its one asset was the land that had been bought with
the sacrifices of the first ten years, and after 1616 all of its plans
depended upon the hope that it might use its power to give title to
that land as an inducement for investment in the colony. In its
advertisement in 1616 adventurers, both old and new, were invited to
take up shares for occupancy by themselves or for development by
tenants sent for the purpose. Perhaps because the first response to
this appeal was disappointing, the company provided an additional
inducement in 1617 by promising 50 acres per head for every person
sent to the colony, the payment being due to the one who bore the cost.
This was the Virginia headright, as it came to be called, which was
destined to remain the chief feature of the colony's land policy
through many years after the demise of the company itself. Intended at
first to encourage the adventurers in England to send the labor that
was necessary for the development of the land, it served thereafter as
a land subsidy of the immigration on which the colony lived and grew.

By 1618 the fortunes of Virginia were taking a turn for the better. The
adventurers, or some of them at least, found encouragement in continued
shipments of tobacco. These shipments were small and the quality of the
tobacco could not be compared with the Spanish leaf of West Indian
production which was finding a growing market in London despite King
James's known disapproval of the habit on which the market grew. But
the quality of Virginia tobacco, for which Sir Thomas Smith seems to
have found a first market in the East Indies, no doubt could be
improved as the planters learned the art of its cultivation and the
adventurers found for them a better weed. No doubt, too, thi