was the Scots merchants, not the
English, who came to control much of the Chesapeake tobacco trade.

English politicians and citizens alike had a very incomplete
understanding of the great strides made by Virginia. They still thought
of Virginians as provincials, struggling in the wilderness, or as
impoverished Scots, Irish, and Germans living in the back-country.
Hundreds of English military officers, many of whom would achieve
positions of political influence in the 1760's and 1770's, were
surprised to find Virginia and other American colonies to be
economically prosperous, socially mature, and attractive places in
which to live. Englishman after Englishman wrote about Virginians who
lived in a style befitting English country gentry and London merchants.
Over and over again they noted the near absence of poverty, even on the
frontier. Their discoveries matched English political needs. Not only
was it necessary for the Americans to assume a greater share of the
financial burdens, Englishmen now knew they could do it.

These Englishmen also made another major discovery--the colonies were
violating the English constitution. They had grown independent of the
crown and the mother country. They paid little attention to
parliamentary laws and the Navigation Acts; they smuggled extensively
and bribed customs officials; and they traded with the enemy in
wartime. They had developed political practices which conflicted with
the constitution as the British knew it. Legislatures ignored the
king's instructions, often refused to support the war efforts until
they had forced concessions from the governors, and had taken royal and
executive prerogatives unto themselves. Worse yet, royal governors like
Robert Dinwiddie and Francis Fauquier yielded to the demands of the
House of Burgesses and accepted laws explicitly contrary to their royal
instructions. What these Englishmen discovered was the collapse of the
imperial system as set forth in the creation of the Board of Trade in
1696. In its place there had been substituted, quite unnoticed by
British officials, the House of Burgesses which thought of itself as a
miniature House of Commons.[1]

[1] An excellent summary of the ways in which the Virginia
burgesses and their counterparts in North and South Carolina and
Georgia quietly gained the upper hand by mid-century, see Jack P.
Greene, Quest for Power (University of North Carolina Press,
1963).

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