he royal revenue. Such a declaration would not
have seconded successfully their plea for mercy. This is made amply
clear by the reception accorded one of the few complaints which did
actually touch the Navigation Acts. The commissioners report it to the
King as "an extravagant request for liberty to transport their tobacco
to any of his Majesty's plantations without paying the imposts, payable
by act of Parliament, etc. This head is wholly mutinous--to desire a
thing contrary to his Majesty's royal pleasure and benefit and also
against an act of Parliament."[5-29]

Despite the obviously ruinous effects of the Navigation Acts upon
Virginia, Mr. Beer makes the assertion that there was no very serious
and general opposition to them in Virginia. "Apart from the criticisms
of Bland and Berkeley," he says, "there was virtually no complaint
against the system of trade enjoined by the Navigation Acts. While the
Barbados Assembly and that colony's governors were vociferous in their
protests, the Virginia legislature remained strangely mute."[5-30]

This silence on the part of the Virginia Assembly can by no means be
interpreted as an indication that the people of the colony felt the
Navigation Acts to be equitable and not injurious to their interests. It
meant only that no Assembly under Sir William Berkeley would dare
protest against an act which had received the royal sanction. That would
have seemed the veriest treason to the fiery old loyalist. And the
Assembly was entirely under Sir William's control. The members of both
Houses were his creatures and his henchmen. Over and over again it is
testified that the Assembly did nothing more than register his
will.[5-31] If then it did not protest, it was because Sir William did
not wish it to protest.

But this does not prove that the planters were not angered and alarmed
at the stringent acts. That they considered them baleful is amply proved
by their continuous complaints of the economic ruin which had overtaken
the colony. The method they chose of combatting the trade laws, a method
apt to be far more effective than the angry protests of the Barbados
Assembly, was to send the Governor to England to use his influence at
Court to have the acts modified or repealed. And Berkeley did what he
could. While in England he wrote a paper called _A Discourse and View of
Virginia_, which he hoped would induce the Government to change its
policy in regard to the colonies. "Wee cannot but