The colony[305] meanwhile proceeded with varied fortunes. The emigrants had been very badly selected for their task: "poor gentlemen, tradesmen, serving-men, libertines, and such like, ten times more fit to spoil a commonwealth than either to begin or maintain one." These men were tempted into the undertaking by hopes of sudden wealth, and were altogether disinclined to even the slight labor of tilling that exuberant soil, when only a subsistence was to be their reward. In 1619 James commenced the system of transporting malefactors, by sending 100 "dissolute persons" to Virginia. These men were used as laborers, or rather slaves, but tended seriously to lower the character of the voluntary emigration.[306] In 1625 only 1800 convicts remained alive out of 9000 who had been transported at a cost of L15,000.[308] The contracted and arbitrary system of the exclusive company was felt as a great evil in the colony.[309] This body was at length superseded by the forfeiture of its charter, and the crown assumed the direction of affairs. Many years of alternate anarchy and tyranny followed. During the rebellion of Bacon in 1676, the most remarkable event in this early period of Virginian history, English troops were first introduced into the American colonies. Sir William Berkeley, who was appointed governor in 1642, visited the insurrectionists with a terrible vengeance, when the death of the leader, Bacon, left them defenseless. "The old fool," said Charles II. (with truth), "has taken away more lives in that naked country than I for the murder of my father." But, though the complaints of the oppressed were heard in England with impartiality, and Berkeley was hunted to death by public opinion on his return there to defend himself, the permanent results of Bacon's rebellion were disastrous to Virginia: all the measures of reform which had been attempted during its brief success were held void, and every restrictive feature that had been introduced into legislation by the detested governor was perpetuated. Among the first settlers in Virginia, gold was the great object, it was every where eagerly sought, but in vain. Several ships were loaded with a sort of yellow clay, and sent to England under the belief that it contained the most precious of metals, but it was found to be utterly worthless. The colonists next turned their attention to the cultivation of tobacco.[310] This speedily became so profitable that it was pursued even to the exclusion of all other industry.