1681 is attested by the statement of the Council that the impossibility
of disposing of their tobacco without a heavy loss overwhelmed both
Virginia and Maryland, and brought upon them a "vast poverty and
infinite necessity."[5-18] "The low price of tobacco staggers the
imagination," Lord Culpeper wrote to Secretary Coventry, "and the
continuance of it will be the speedy and fatal ruin of this noble
Colony."[5-19]

These distressing conditions bore with telling weight upon the small
planters. The margin of profit which formerly had made it possible for
the freedman to advance rapidly was now wiped out entirely and the poor
man found it impossible to keep out of debt. In 1668 Secretary Ludwell
declared that no one could longer hope to better himself by planting
tobacco.[5-20] Eight years later Nathaniel Bacon, in justifying his
rebellion declared that the small farmers were deeply in debt and that
it was "not in the power of labor or industry" to extricate them.[5-21]
"The poverty of Virginia is such," said a certain John Good in 1676,
"that the major part of the inhabitants can scarce supply their wants
from hand to mouth, and many there are besides can hardly shift without
supply one year."[5-22] In 1673 the Governor and Council reported that
of the planters, "at least one third are single persons (whose labor
will hardly maintain them) or men much in debt," who might reasonably be
expected to revolt to the Dutch upon any small advantage gained by
them.[5-23] In 1680 they again reported that "the indigency of the
Inhabitants is such that they are in noe manner capacitated to support
themselves."[5-24] Three years later they wrote that "the people of
Virginia are generally, some few excepted, extremely poor, not being
able to provide against the pressing necessities of their
families."[5-25]

Despite this repeated and explicit testimony of the misery and poverty
of the colony during this period, which resulted from the stagnation of
the tobacco market after the passage of the Navigation Acts, the
surprising statement is made by Mr. George Lewis Beer, in _The Old
Colonial System_, that England's trade restrictions had nothing to do
with Bacon's Rebellion. "It has been at various times contended," he
says, "that the uprising was, in part at least, one against the laws of
trade and navigation. If there had existed in Virginia any widespread
and well defined feeling of antagonism to these laws, it would
unquestionably hav