and our ministers
are well paid, and by my consent should be better _if they
would pray oftener and preach less_. But of all other
commodities, so of this, _the worst are sent us_, and we had
few that we could boast of, since the persecution of
Cromwell's tyranny drove divers worthy men hither. But I
thank God, _there are no free schools nor printing_, and I
hope we shall not have these hundred years: for _learning_
has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the
world; and _printing_ has divulged them, and libels against
the best government. God keep us from both!"[211]

Thus was the entire colony in ignorance and superstition, and it was
the policy of the home government to keep out the light. The
sentiments of Berkeley were applauded in official circles in England,
and most rigorously carried out by his successor who, in 1682, with
the concurrence of the council, put John Buckner under bonds for
introducing the art of printing into the colony.[212] This prohibition
continued until 1733. If the whites of the colony were left in
ignorance, what must have been the mental and moral condition of the
slaves? The ignorance of the whites made them the pliant tools of the
London Company, and the Negroes in turn were compelled to submit to a
condition "of rather rigorous servitude."[213] This treatment has its
reflexive influence on the planters. Men fear most the ghosts of their
sins, and for cruel deeds rather expect and dread "the reward in the
life that now is." So no wonder Dinwiddie wrote the father of Charles
James Fox in 1758: "We dare not venture to part with any of our white
men any distance, as we must have a watchful eye over our negro
slaves."

In 1648, as we mentioned some pages back, there were about three
hundred slaves in the colony. Slow coming at first, but at length they
began to increase rapidly, so that in fifty years they had increased
one hundred per cent. In 1671 they were two thousand strong, and all,
up to that date, direct from Africa. In 1715 there were twenty-three
thousand slaves against seventy-two thousand whites.[214] By the year
1758 the slave population had increased to the alarming number of over
one hundred thousand, which was a little less than the numerical
strength of the whites.

During this period of a century and a half, slavery took deep root in
the colony of Virginia, and attained unwieldy and alarming
proportions. It ha