s had been
issued, had filled up more rapidly than Brunswick, where they had been
restricted in size.[8-22]

In the first decade of the new century the emigration out of the tobacco
colonies continued without abatement. With another disastrous decline in
the price of tobacco following the outbreak of the wars of Charles XII
and Louis XIV, so many families moved over the border that the Board of
Trade, once more becoming seriously alarmed, questioned the Council as
to the causes of the evil and what steps should be taken to remedy it.
In their reply the Councillors repeated the old arguments, declaring
that the lack of land in Virginia and the immunity of debtors from
prosecution in the proprietory colonies were responsible for the
movement. But they touched the heart of the matter in their further
statement that the great stream of negroes that was pouring into the
colony had so increased the size of the tobacco crop that prices had
declined and the poor found it difficult to subsist. Not only "servants
just free go to North Carolina," they wrote, "but old planters whose
farms are worn out."[8-23]

A year later President Jennings stated that the migration was
continuing and that during the summer of 1709 "many entire families" had
moved out of the colony.[8-24] In fact, although but few indentured
servants arrived from England after the first decade of the century,
poor whites were still departing for the north or for western Carolina
so late as 1730. William Byrd II tells us that in 1728, when he was
running the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina, he was
entertained by a man who "was lately removed, Bag and Baggage from
Maryland, thro a strong Antipathy he had to work and paying his Debts."
Indeed he thought it a "thorough Aversion to Labor" which made "People
file off to North Carolina."[8-25]

It is impossible to estimate the numbers involved in this movement, but
they must have run into the thousands. For a full half century a large
proportion of the white immigrants to Virginia seem to have remained
there for a comparatively short time only, then to pass on to other
settlements. And the migration to Virginia during these years we know to
have comprised not less than thirty or thirty-five thousand persons. In
fact, it would seem that this movement out of the older colony must have
been a very important factor in the peopling of its neighbors, not only
western Carolina and western Maryland, but Dela