“Indented servants existed, indeed, in all the American colonies; but the cultivation of tobacco created a special demand for them in Virginia and Maryland. A regular trade was early established in the transport of persons who, for the sake of a passage to America, suffered themselves to be sold by the master of the vessel to serve for a term of years after their arrival. Nor was this embarkation always voluntary; sometimes they were entrapped by infamous arts, sometimes even kidnapped, and sometimes they were persons sentenced to transportation for political and other offences. Felons so transported were known under the appellation of ‘jail-birds.’ Cromwell in this way disposed of his English, Scotch, and Irish prisoners of war, both in Virginia and New England. On the expiration of their term of servitude, of four, five, or seven years, these servants acquired all the rights of freemen, and in Virginia were entitled to the fifty acres of land to which all immigrants had a claim.” The plantations lay along the rivers, and trading vessels ascending them, landed their goods and took the tobacco, the great staple production of the country, on board at their very doors. There was no home-manufacture of any kind in Virginia; all manufactured goods were imported from England. Virginia herself neither exported nor imported. She possessed not above two vessels of her own; and, though ship-building and navigation might have been carried on advantageously from her position, she had neither the talent nor the turn of mind necessary for such engagements.