ld at such
prodigeous rates as they please. Many families formerly well clothed and
their houses well furnished are now reduced to rags and all the visible
marks of poverty."[8-35]

This unfortunate period was but temporary. With the conclusion of peace
English tobacco was dumped upon the European market at a figure so low
as to defy competition. And when once the hogsheads began to move, the
reaction on Virginia and Maryland was rapid and pronounced. Soon prices
rose again to the old levels, and the colony entered upon a period, for
the larger planters at least, of unprecedented prosperity.[8-36] But the
eight years of hardship and poverty made a lasting imprint upon the
poorest class of whites. Coming as they did upon the heels of the first
great wave of negro immigration, they accelerated the movement of the
disrupting forces already at work. It was not by accident that the
largest migration of whites to other settlements occurred just at this
time and that the inquiries as to its cause are most frequent. The
little planter class never fully recovered from the blow dealt it by the
temporary loss of the larger part of the European tobacco trade.

The small freeholders who possessed neither servants nor slaves did not
disappear entirely, but they gradually declined in numbers and sank into
abject poverty. During the period of Spotswood's administration they
still constituted a large part of the population. The tax list for 1716
in Lancaster, one of the older counties, shows that of 314 persons
listed as tithables, 202 paid for themselves only.[8-37] Making ample
deductions for persons not owning land it would appear that more than
half the planters at this date still tilled their fields only with their
own labor. At the time of the American Revolution, however, the
situation had changed materially, and a decided dwindling of the poor
farmer class is noticeable. In Gloucester county the tax lists for
1782-83 show 490 white families, of which 320 were in possession of
slaves. Of the 170 heads of families who possessed no negroes, since no
doubt some were overseers, some artisans, some professional men, it is
probable that not more than eighty or ninety were proprietors.[8-38] In
Spotsylvania county similar conditions are noted. Of 704 tithable whites
listed in 1783 all save 199 possessed slaves.[8-39] In Dinwiddie county,
in the year 1782, of 843 tithable whites, 210 only were not slave
holders.[8-40] Apparently the Vir