During Spotswood’s time, Virginia attained to as much political prominence as the century saw for her prior to the Revolution. The German element, which gathered away from tide-water,[616] began to serve as a balance to the Anglican aristocracy, which made the river banks so powerful. The tobacco fields, while they in one sense made that aristocracy, in another made them, in luckless seasons, slaves of a variable market. This relation, producing financial servitude, enforced upon them at times almost the abjectness of the African slaves whom they employed. Above it all, however, arose a spirit of political freedom in contrast with their monetary subjection. The burgesses gradually acquired more and more power, and the finances of the province which they controlled gave them opportunities which compensated for their personal cringing to the wilful imperialism of the tobacco market. The people lacked, too, the independence which mechanical ingenuity gives a race. A certain shiftlessness even about the great estates, a laziness between crops, the content to import the commonest articles instead of making them,—all indicate this. The amenities of living which come from towns were wanting, with perhaps some of the vices, for an ordinary or a public house generally stood even yet for all that constituted a settlement of neighbors. In 1728 Byrd, of Westover, speaks of Norfolk as having “most the air of a town of any in Virginia.” Spotswood remained in Virginia, and was a useful man after his fall from office. He was made the deputy postmaster-general of the colonies (1730-39), and he carried into the management of the mails the same energy which had distinguished his earlier service, and brought Philadelphia and Williamsburg within eight or ten days of each other. On his estates, whether on the Rapidan near his Germans at Germanna, or in his house at Yorktown, he kept the courtly state of his time and rank, and showed in his household his tenderest side. His old martial spirit arose when he was made a major-general to conduct an expedition to the West Indies; but he died (1740) just as he was about to embark, bequeathing his books, maps, and mathematical instruments to the College of William and Mary.