The military regime which made Virginia self-supporting did not make it prosperous, or profitable to the company. In December, 1618, after an expenditure of L80,000 sterling, there were in the colony "600 persons, men, women and children, and cattle three hundred att the most. And the Company was then lefte in debt neer five thousand pounds." The hard-headed Smythe saw little prospect of the dividends which the shareholders were demanding; and he was ready to give way to any one who still had faith to sink yet more money in the enterprise that for a dozen years had disappointed every expectation. Such an idealist was Sir Edwin Sandys. Son of a Puritan Archbishop of York, he had studied at Oxford under Richard Hooker, whose famous book he had read in manuscript. The _Ecclesiastical Polity_ had perhaps confirmed Sandys in a republican way of thinking; and in the year 1618 he was probably a nonconformist--a "religious gentleman," as Edward Winslow called him: at all events, a man of humanitarian and anti-prerogative instincts; a friend of the Earl of Southampton, and leader of those in the company who were in sympathy with the rising tide of liberal sentiment in English politics. The liberal policy which Sandys favored in England, he was now prepared to adopt for the management of Virginia. Convinced that the military and joint-stock regime, even if it had ever served a useful purpose, was retarding the development of the colony, Sandys and Southampton determined to reverse the policy of their predecessors by instituting private property in land and conceding a measure of self-government. A popular assembly was accordingly established in 1619; restrictions on conduct and religious opinion were relaxed; and land grants, both to individuals and to corporations, in small and large tracts, were made on easy terms. It was hoped that an appeal to self-respect and to self-interest would encourage immigration and foster thrift and industry. When Sandys became treasurer in 1618 the time seemed propitious; for it had already been discovered that Virginia tobacco could be sold at a profit in London; and it was the expectation of Sandys, by obtaining for the company its fair share of the profit arising from the importation of tobacco into England, to repay to the shareholders the long-delayed interest on their investments.