amply justified,
therefore, in subordinating them to her own industrial needs.

Thus they viewed the substitution of the importation of slaves to the
tobacco colonies for the importation of white men purely from an
English, not an Anglo-Saxon, point of view. Had it been a question of
bringing thousands of negroes to England itself to drive the white
laborers from the fields, they would have interposed an emphatic veto.
But with the structure of colonial life they were not greatly concerned.
In 1693, when James Blair secured from the King and Queen a gift for his
new college at Williamsburg, Attorney-General Seymour objected
vigorously, stating that there was not the least occasion for such an
institution in Virginia. Blair reminded him that the chief purpose of
the college was to educate young men for the ministry and begged him to
consider that the people of the colony had souls to be saved as well as
the people of England. "Souls! Damn your souls," snapped the
Attorney-General, "make tobacco."[8-7] It would be unfair to say that
the British Government took just the same view of the colonists as did
Seymour, but there can be no doubt that their chief concern in the
plantations was centered upon the size of their exports to England and
of their purchases of English goods. And as the slaves could make more
tobacco than the indentured servants, it became the settled policy of
the Crown to encourage the African trade in every possible way.

The influx of slaves not only put almost a complete end to the
importation of white servants, but it reacted disastrously upon the
Virginia yeomanry. In this respect we find a close parallel with the
experience of ancient Rome with slave labor. In the third and second
centuries before Christ the glory of the republic lay in its peasantry.
The self-reliant, sturdy, liberty-loving yeoman formed the backbone of
the conquering legion and added to the life of the republic that rugged
strength that made it so irresistible. "To say that a citizen is a good
farmer is to reach the extreme limit of praise," said Cato. Some of the
ablest of the early Roman generals were recruited from the small farmer
class. Fabius Maximus, the Dictator, in need of money, sent his son to
Rome to sell his sole possession, a little farm of seven jugera.
Regulus, while in Africa, asked that he be recalled from his command
because the hired man he had left to cultivate his fields had fled with
all his farm implements