r," wrote Virgil, while Lucian bewailed the departed
peasants whose places were taken by fettered slaves.[8-9]

The importation of slaves to Virginia had somewhat similar results.
While not destroying entirely the little farmer class, it exerted a
baleful influence upon it, driving many families out of the colony,
making the rich man richer, reducing the poor man to dire poverty.
Against this unfortunate development the Virginia yeoman was helpless.
Instinctively he must have felt that the slave was his enemy, and the
hatred and rivalry which even today exists between the negro and the
lowest class of whites, the so-called "poor white trash," dates back to
the Seventeenth century.

The emigration of poor persons, usually servants just freed, from
Virginia to neighboring colonies was well under way even at the time of
Bacon's Rebellion. In 1677 complaint was made of "the inconvenience
which arose from the neighborhood of Maryland and North Carolina," in
that Virginia was daily deprived of its inhabitants by the removal of
poor men hither. Runaway servants were welcomed in both places, it was
asserted, while the debtor was accorded protection against
prosecution.[8-10] This early emigration was caused, of course, not by
the importation of slaves, for that movement had not yet assumed
important proportions, but by the evil consequences of the Navigation
Acts. The Virginia yeoman moved on to other colonies because he found it
impossible to maintain himself at the current price of tobacco.

The continuance of the movement, for it persisted for a full half
century, must be ascribed to the competition of negro labor. Like the
Roman peasant, the Virginia yeoman, to an extent at least, found it
impossible to maintain himself in the face of slave competition. The
servant, upon the expiration of his term, no longer staked off his
little farm and settled down to a life of usefulness and industry. The
poor planter who had not yet fully established himself, sold or deserted
his fields and moved away in search of better opportunities and higher
returns.

This migration was not the first of its kind in the English colonies,
for the movement of Massachusetts congregations into the valley of the
Connecticut antedated it by several decades. Yet it furnishes an
interesting illustration of the lack of permanency in American life, of
the facility with which populations urged on by economic pressure of one
kind or another change localitie