Old Virginia and her neighbours

SOCIETY IN THE OLD DOMINION. 185men captured at Worcester were landed in Boston,but so small was the demand for their labour thatthey were soon exported southward, — perhaps tothe West Indies in exchange for sugar or rum.After the restoration of the monarchy so manynon-conformists were sold into servitude in Virginiaas to lead to an insurrection in 1663, followedby legislation designed to keep allconvictsout of the colony.^ On the whole, the number ofpolitical offenders brought to those colonies thathave since become the United States was certainlymuch smaller than the number of criminal convicts,while the latter were in all probability muchless numerous than the redemptioners. Duringthe seventeenth century the demand for wholesaleservile white labour was much greater in Virginiaand Maryland than elsewhere, and there are manythat they received more convicts andindicationsredemptioners than the other colonies. In theeighteenthcentury, however, the middle colonies,especially Pennsylvania, probably received at leastas large a share.Our survey shows that in the class of indentedwhite servants there was a wide range of gradation,from thrifty redemptioners ^ and gallantof Quality, Emigrants, Religious Exiles, Political Rebds, etc.,pp. 31.5-344.1 Hening's Statutes, u. 50.2 Mr. Bruce has well said that in the seventeenth century thewhite servant was " the main pillar of the industrial fabric " ofVirginia, and " performed the most honourable work in establishing'and sustaining " that colony. There can be no doubt, as hegoes on to say, that the work of colonization which has been performedby the people of England surpasses, both in extent andbeneficence, that of any other race which has left an impression