The share of the Colony of Virginia in the African slave trade was that of an unwilling recipient; never that of an active party. She had no ships engaged in any foreign trade; for the strict obedience of her governors and citizens to the colonial laws of the mother country prevented her trading to foreign ports, and all the carrying trade to British ports and colonies was in the hands of New Englanders and Englishmen. In the replies submitted by Sir William Berkeley, Governor, 1671, to certain written inquiries of the "Lords of Plantations," we find the following statement: "And this is the cause why no great or small vessels are built here; for we are most obedient to all laws, while the men of New England break through, and trade to any place that their interest leads them."[5] The same facts, and the sense of grievance which the colonists derived from them, are curiously attested by the party of Nathaniel Bacon also, who opposed Sir William Berkeley. When they supposed that they had wrested the government from his hands, Sarah Drummond, an enthusiastic patriot, exclaimed: "Now we can build ships, and like New England, trade to any part of the world."[6] But her hopes were not realized: Virginia continued without ships. No vessel ever went from her ports, or was ever manned by her citizens, to engage in the slave trade; and while her government can claim the high and peculiar honour of having ever opposed the cruel traffick, her citizens have been precluded by Providence from the least participation in it. [Footnote 5: Herring, Stat. at Large, vol. ii., p. 516.] [Footnote 6: Campbell's Virginia, p. 304.]