Planting a Commonwealth (Spring 1995)

[This is Chapter 3 in my PhD dissertation. This essay builds on two other essays, “Myths of Origin, Origins of Myth” and “Chrematistics, Competency, and the Commonweal”.]

The anomalous position of colonial Virginia in the debate over a transition to capitalism is well reflected in the contrasting positions of Max Weber and Perry Miller on the nature and explanation of the rise of capitalism. Both would agree that the eighteenth‑century Yankee represented the modern spirit of capitalism. But whereas Weber followed an ideological approach emphasizing the direct contribution of Puritanism to the rise of capitalism, Miller took the anti-Weberian environmentalist approach, stressing the role of the demise of Puritanism in unleashing the capitalist spirit. ¹

The contrast between these two scholars stands out even more in their opposing interpretations of colonial Virginia. Drawing his pre-Bruce and pre-Wertenbaker history of Cava­lier Virginia from English historian John Andrew Doyle, Weber noted the paradox of this traditional society having evolved out of the capitalist purposes of a joint‑stock company. The paradox confirmed his belief that New England Puritanism provided the key to Yankee capitalism. Miller, in contrast, accepted the Wertenbaker consensus on the modern nature of seventeenth‑century Virginia society but found a completely different paradox. Highlighting the Puritan elements in the literature of the Company years, Miller observed in early seventeenth‑century Virginia a condensed version of his New England declension, with the process of Americanization completed in Virginia before the Puritans even arrived in Massachusetts Bay.

Few scholars have accepted either interpretation of seventeenth-century Virginia. Most have rejected Weber’s traditionalist argument out of hand and look askance at any need to emphasize the early piety Miller found. Yet even fewer have ever bothered to examine directly the relevance to seventeenth-century Virginia of any of the traditional arguments about the transition to capitalism or the rise of liberalism so prevalent in the historiography of seven­teenth-century England.

Before assessing the relevance of such modern concepts as capitalism or liberalism to seventeenth-century Virginia we need to examine the same type of normative ideals which social scientists have so carefully unearthed for contempo­raneous England. Such a study shows that seventeenth-century Virginia planters differed little in their ideal values from Englishmen on the other side of the Atlantic. Tradi­tional English values were definitely part of the cultural baggage of these first Anglo-Americans. Indeed, the language itself remained more firmly traditional in Virginia over the course of the seventeenth century, as resistant to the challenge of the New World environment as to the new ideas of “interest” increasingly prevalent among English thinkers in the second half of the seventeenth century, firmly entrenched in the language dominant in England at the time of first planting.

Nevertheless, this language‑-when applied to the fram­ing and interpretation of the laws of the colony–proved in practice as dynamic and malleable to new circumstances as it had in England. Indeed, the legal developments in colonial Virginia represent a parallel evolution of the balance between individual good, liberty, necessity, and the common good in response to the same market forces that shaped the development of “mercantilism”‑-a shorthand label that histo­rians have attached to the complex system of political and economic thought and practice in seventeenth-century England whose frequently misunderstood normative grounding we have explored.

Common Good and Public Necessity

Intellectual historians of the colonial South have traditionally emphasized “social-cultural themes” rather than ideas, with most scholars attributing this to the relative lack of literary production out of the Southern colonies, especially those published sermons which served as “the public expression of the community” in New England. ² However, as Miller himself showed in his analysis of the Virginia Company literature, the demonstration of the public or normative mind need not be restricted to sermons. The historian of normative thought in colonial Virginia perforce must depend more on other types of literary evidence, inclu­ding one particularly neglected source‑-the preambles to the acts and other addresses and petitions of the Grand Assem­bly‑-supplemented by promotional literature and private correspondence.

Normative statements abound in the language employed by the Governor, Council, and Burgesses to justify their ac­tions and petitions. For example, in March 1632 the Grand Assembly justified the restriction of vessels to the port of James City on the basis that “nothinge can more conduce to the welfare of this colony, then that some efectuall course be taken in the trade of our tobacco.” ³ In October 1673, the preamble to the acts of Assembly opens: “To the glory of Almighty God and publique weale of this his majesties colony of Virginia, were enacted as followeth….” ⁴ Whether phrased positively as “the publique good” (1666), the “pub­lique weal” (1673,1674), “welfare” (1632,1647), “necessity” (1633,1646,1662), “happiness” (1664), “prosperity” (1664), “the present honor and reputation” (1669), “the future great benefitt and profitt” of the colony (1669); or, negatively, as “burthensome” (1638) or “much prejudiciall to the common­wealth and good of this colony” (1648), all seventeenth-century acts of Assembly were justified (when any normative justification was given) by employing the rhetoric of the commonwealth ideology. ⁵

The historian should, of course, remain wary of trea­ting such rhetoric too literally since all laws and peti­tions were subject to Crown approval and the power structure of the English empire left the colonists little choice but to frame their arguments in the accepted language of the day. Nevertheless, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary one may surmise that English ethics were quite readily transplanted to seventeenth-century Virgin­ia. ⁶ Furthermore, as we shall see, the normative language in actual practice proved so flexible that there was little reason not to continue drawing upon the power of the tradi­tional rhetoric.

In the name of the common good, the Assembly throughout the seventeenth century justified multifarious types of regulation. Like all the other Anglo-American colonies, Virginia from the beginning constrained the pursuit of wealth in diverse aspects of the economy. There were, for example, statutes for: “the keepinge of every man to his Trade”; regulating wages; regulating fees of various profes­sions such as surveyors, surgeons, and physicians; outlawing or severely restricting fees of attorneys; regulating gains of various tradesmen, including millers, ordinary keepers, liquor retailers, shippers; regulating merchant profits; seconding English laws against engrossing and forestalling; prohibiting or severely restricting the export and import of certain commodities; promoting self-sufficiency; and Sabba­tarian restrictions on business. ⁷

The Assembly linked these acts to the common good in a variety of ways. Like good boosters, they often equated the common good with support for intensive and extensive econo­mic development of the colony. ⁸ The colony retained much of the corporate mentality developed during the Company years, a mentality that showed up most strongly in the regular affirmation of Virginia Company precedents for the regula­tion of price, marketing, quality, and quantity of tobac­co. ⁹ From the 1610s well into the 1660s, the colony’s leaders attempted to sidestep the market by legislating or negotiating for a monopoly price with the Crown or mer­chants. ¹⁰ The Company set a precedent in 1619 for all later store and warehouse acts (as a means to uphold the price of tobacco) when they required that all tobacco be brought to the Cape Merchant at regulated prices, “that by this meanes the same going for Englande into one hande, the price there­of, may be upheld the better.” ¹¹

Quality control began along with representative govern­ment, as the House of Burgesses in 1619 passed the original tobacco inspection law prohibiting second-growth tobacco, ordering the lowest grades destroyed, and prohibiting the marketing of suckers, ground leaves, and other “trash” on penalty of burning. Throughout the seventeenth century subsequent acts repeated these injunctions, some attempting to specify exact methods of planting (including spacing and number of leaves per plant). The laws defined merchantable tobacco, prohibited planters who attempted to market “bad” tobacco from planting again, restricted planters to the “longe type” of tobacco, proscribed harvesting after a certain date, prohibited importation of Carolina tobacco, and eliminated trash by prohibiting bulk tobacco ship­ment. ¹²

Of course, as planters, merchants, and the Crown well understood, quality control was also quantity control and the two were conjoined in endless calls for both better quality and reduced production as the solution to Virginia’s ills. ¹³ As John Rolfe noted in 1616, the Company under Governor Dale had already begun to curb production. Early efforts at “stinting” aimed at regulating the maximum quan­tity (either number of plants or leaves or total pounds) of tobacco according to the size of the household (perhaps presuming a household’s competency proportional to its size) and requiring that a “reasonable proportion” of land be set aside to ensure an adequate corn crop. Later efforts focused on the total cessation of tobacco planting for a fixed period of time or the prohibition of planting or replanting after a fixed date. ¹⁴

Framing such mercantilist acts in terms of the common good frequently involved little more than platitudes about greater convenience or wholesomeness, or reduced incon­venience, prejudice, or mischief, often linked to the better ordering of trade or upholding the price of tobacco. ¹⁵ The logic of the wording rested on prudence and a knowledge of local conditions, tobacco culture, and the nature of the market. ¹⁶ Even the acts concerning treatment of servants were based not on human rights or individual liberties but on how information about such treatment would affect the image of the colony in England and thus the colony’s ability to attract more servants. ¹⁷

Virginians also appealed to precedent, especially to the custom of the country, when justifying the preservation of “all such rights, goods, liberties and Priviledges what­soever as were at any time heretofore granted unto the late Company” and traditional perquisites of office. Sometimes they appealed to the precedent of English statutes. ¹⁸ On one occasion they even appealed to the mercantilist prece­dents of other nations in general, justifying efforts to promote self-sufficiency in order to avoid entanglement in foreign wars. ¹⁹ Infrequently they used the notion of a higher law, for example, the natural law of self-defense or the reli­gious justification of private property. ²⁰

In the natural law tradition, Virginians well grasped the concept of public necessity, although the anonymous Virginian who wrote An Essay upon the Government of the English Plantations on the Continent of America (1701) questioned whether assemblies in the colonies could, “where Necessity requires, make such Acts as best suit the Circum­stances and Constitution of the Country, even tho’ in some Particulars, they plainly differ from the Laws of Eng­land.” ²¹ While the royal instructions to the governors com­manded that colonial laws comply “as near as may be, to the Laws of England,” the instructions recognized the inevitable possibility of divergence due to “some extremity,” “some unexpected occasions and necessity.” ²² Necessity was most particularly the order of the day in the martial law of the early Company years when the very survival of the colony was at stake. ²³ But the concept reappeared throughout the seven­­teenth century whenever any crisis arose. In 1647, realizing that the disorderly seating of land antagonized the Indians “and by such probable event (out of honor and necessity of state) imbroyling and ingageing the country in a troublesome and chargeable warre),” the Grand Assembly ordered an end to the practice. ²⁴ Certain crises demanded extraordinary taxa­tion, like the Indian wars and the effort in the 1670s to raise money to fight the Northern Neck patentees in order to protect Virginia’s liberties. ²⁵ In 1666 the Assembly noted that the annual levies were “propor­tioned to the publique necessity,” suggesting a usage compa­ra­ble to perpetua neces­sitas. ²⁶ However, the need to dis­tri­bute this public neces­sity equitably among all of the citizens‑-an essential element of the common good in the English tradition‑-regu­larly acted as a constraint on the seventeenth-century government. ²⁷

In whatever way the colonists used the common good or necessity to justify the acts of their assemblies, they knew that for ratification they also had to show how an act served the good of the Crown. Thus they stressed the mutual welfare of Crown and colony. Colonists argued that acts would reduce the cost of maintaining the colony, help devel­op alternative staples to reduce English dependence on foreign countries, increase Crown customs, and defeat the private ends of merchants detrimental to both Crown and colony. ²⁸ Virginians were most successful in gaining Crown support for their agenda in the 1620s and 1630s with their efforts to ban the importation of Spanish tobacco and domes­tic tobacco production in England. ²⁹

One of the most persistent difficulties facing the Virginians was how to justify tobacco stints inasmuch as Crown customs depended far more on the quantity than the quality of tobacco. To this challenge the Virginians re­sponded quite creatively, if sometimes failing to persuade the Crown. Frequently the Assembly claimed that without a stint the low tobacco price would force the planters to abandon the colony and thus decrease tobacco production and customs altogether. ³⁰ In one of the weaker justifications, the Assembly argued that stints would lead to higher quality tobacco and thus increase Crown customs by reducing com­plaints about “garblinge” (inferior tobacco which did not pay customs). Realizing this argument probably would not sway the Crown, the Assembly offered “if it shall bee deemed His Majestys losse in fallinge from soe greate to a farre lesser quantity of tobaccoe, our desire is His Majesties profitts may bee raised with ours” (without specifying exactly how). ³¹ In 1666 the Virginians claimed the accumu­lated tobacco would more than compensate for the tobacco lost due to the proposed stint. ³² Later defenders of bulk tobacco (stuffing ships with loose tobacco and thus increas­ing exports) showed how such tobacco benefitted his Maj­esty’s interest since the worst as well as the best of tobaccoes paid the same customs, while critics complained that bulk tobacco would actually reduce customs by encourag­ing smuggling. ³³

Covetousness, Competency, and Poverty

Ubiquitous condemnation of covetousness and avarice suggests that seventeenth-century Virginia hardly proved a fertile ground for a chrematistic ethic–at least on the level of ideal norms. Frequently the colonists com­plained of excessive prices in the medieval language of a “just price.” The avarice of outside merchants seeking to monopolize trade raised the specter of corruption and en­slavement. ³⁴ The Burgesses complained in 1638 that “Mer­chants & Maisters of Shippes,” driven by “the boundles desire of gayne,” “in the tymes of theire [the colonists’] necessityes take advantage to sell cloathes and provisions for theire supplyes at great and excessive rates”. ³⁵

Colonists just as regularly accused each other of covetousness. Thus John Rolfe in 1616 criticized the “insa­tiable greediness” of planters for “the worke of the world”; John Pory in 1619 chided Governor Argall for behaving “more for love of gaine, the root of all evill, then for any true love he bore to this Plantation”; William Capps in 1623 called Governor Yeardley a “right worthie Statesman, for his owne profit”; Governor Harvey accused Dr. John Potts in 1630 of “seekinge his owne benefit by foule & coveteous ways”; Morgan Godwyn in 1685 condemned “that filthy Principle, which I think is almost universally received, and currant amongst them, That whatever conduceth to the getting of Mony, and carrying on of Trade, must certainly be law­ful.” ³⁶ In the mid-seventeenth century, the Assembly repeat­edly condemned endemic avarice in certain professions, especially “mercenary attorneys” and “practitioners in physick and chyrurgery.” ³⁷ Within the mercantilist concep­tion of a closed economy, Virginians could hardly argue for or expect more than a competency lest they unwisely profit at the expense of the Crown which depended heavily on tobac­co duties. ³⁸

Competency provided ethical limits on the pursuit of wealth for the seventeenth-century Virginian as much as any Englishman. One contemporary complained that “there are many little poor parishes not able to give a minister a competent maintenance.” ³⁹ William Fitzhugh described his economic goal as “a very good indifferency.” ⁴⁰ Governor William Berkeley hoped at the end of his days to “‘return home with a competent subsistence.'” ⁴¹ A 1662 law speci­fied that all servants should be provided a “competent dyett.” ⁴² “Men of integrity” required a competent salary to fulfill their public duties. ⁴³ Council members “quali­fied for their offices under the provisions of Royal Instructions to Colo­nial Governors regarding appointees of the council ‘as men of estates and abilities and not neces­sitous people or much in debt.'” ⁴⁴

The promotional or “present state” literature reinfor­ces this notion of the relevance of competency in both England and her colonies. Although such promotional litera­ture regularly appealed to the baser interests of potential immigrants and investors, it generally framed these inter­ests within the traditional economic ethics of English and colonial society. ⁴⁵ Virginia never offered endless riches, only the opportunity for release from the harsh work condi­tions and impoverishment of England and the opportunity for a competency with time and reasonable industry. ⁴⁶ Ralph Hamor and John Rolfe emphasized the clothing and other necessaries which the industrious and honest husbandman could earn with “the least part of his labour.” ⁴⁷ John Hammond reported that “those Servants that will be industri­ous may in their time of service gain a competent estate before their Freedomes, which is usually done by many.” ⁴⁸ Far from stressing the opportunity for endless labor in the competition for wealth, the promotional literature stressed the abundance of recreational opportunities granted ser­vants: in winter, before sunrise, after sunset, in summer five hours during the heat of day, Saturday afternoons, the Sabbath, “the old Holidayes”‑-an attitude not far different from either the English or New England Puritans who likewise played down endless labor in emphasizing “needful recrea­tion.” ⁴⁹

Although a couple of ministers‑-Deuel Pead in the late seventeenth century and James Blair in the early eight­eenth century–in public sermons condemned in a scholastic manner attempts to better one’s condition, the overwhelming evidence suggests that Virginians shared the contemporary English views on the progressive nature of competency, the idea that all Englishmen could share in the accumulation and the enjoyment of wealth provided by increased industry and the freedom of the fruits of one’s labor. ⁵⁰ “Hundreds of examples,” declared Governor Berkeley in a speech before the Grand Assembly in 1651, “shew us that Industry and Thrift in a short time may bring us to as high a degree of it [wealth], as the Country and our Conditions are yet capable of.” ⁵¹ Furthermore, both the Crown and the Assembly never passed any law restricting the ability of planters to expand the size of their household through the importation, buying, or hiring of servants and/or slaves and thus never esta­blished any limit to the level of extensive development. Indeed, despite a recognition of the relative inelasticity of the demand for tobacco, the Assembly throughout the seventeenth century positively encouraged expansion, seeking to attract all entrepreneurs to import as much capital and labor as possible.

The importance of competency in the mind of Englishmen made private necessity a particular threat to the common good in Virginia as in England. Indeed, of all the threats to the common good in seventeenth-century Virginia, none received more attention than ubiquitous poverty. Despite all the claims for a natural or potential paradise, planters lamented their poverty almost from the day they started planting tobacco, as tobacco prices quickly plummeted from astronomical early heights, and they continued to complain about low tobacco prices for the rest of the seventeenth century. Later they would even complain about the pover­ty of the earliest “boom” years lest anybody in England believe that they could return to prejudicial practices by institu­ting monopolies or allowing the importation into England of foreign tobacco. ⁵²

In claiming necessity or fear of necessity‑-often with graphic details of nakedness, the suffering of women and children, abandonment, ruin, destruction, and “great wants and miseries”‑-Virginians appealed to the Crown on the basis of both natural and religious law, believing that involun­tary poverty demanded equity and charity. ⁵³ Virginians as well as Englishmen also knew that private necessity could readily evolve into public necessity. ⁵⁴ Even if Governor Berkeley in his A Discourse and View of Virginia (1663)‑-bemoaning the Navigation Acts that were driving Virginians to the point where “all our sweat and labour…will hardly procure us course clothes to keep us from the extremities of heat and cold”‑-could be said to speak for the other plan­ters when he claimed that “yet if these pressures of [sic] us did advance the Customs, or benefit the Nation, we should not repine,” he, no less than any other Virginian, could scarcely think of a situation where their poverty would conduce to the common good. ⁵⁵

Poverty was the most frequent specific explanation given for any action or non-action in the seventeenth centu­ry and was used at one time or another to justify almost every type of action or non-action by Virginians. In 1622, Captain Francis West and other “auncient Planters and Adven­turers on the behalf of themselves and the rest of your poore distressed Subjects of that Plantation” petitioned the king complaining that after freight and customs,

tobacco is of noe value, whereby they are like to perish, and soe hopefull a Plantation will presently sinck and become of noe use at all, unlesse your Majestie out of your gratious and royall care of all your Subjects and of all the parte of your Dominions wilbee gratiously pleased to take them into your immediate care and proteccion, to make the Tobacco your owne commoditie, to take a convenient propor­tion yearely from the Colonies, at a reasonable price. ⁵⁶

Similar arguments were used to justify the remittance or reduction of tobacco duties (1624, 1679, 1713); a grant to Virginia of the sole rights of tobacco importation into England (1624); the repeal of tobacco importation monopolies granted by the king to private individuals (1625, 1628, 1638); the imposition of a set price for tobacco by the colony (1632); opposition to central tobacco warehouses (1638); the removal of restrictions on tobacco production (1638, 1663); stricter controls on the quantity and quality of tobacco production (1640, 1663, 1665, 1666, 1680, 1681, 1686); free trade with all English ports (1645); elimination of tobacco as a circulating medium (1645); restrictions on civil law suits (1646,1658); encouragement of the trade with the Dutch (1647); establishment of county markets (1656); prohibition of the importation of unnecessary commodities (1661); timetables for debt payment (1666); setting up public manufactures (1666); inability to pay the cost of defense against the Dutch or Indians (1667, 1672, 1673, 1679); promotion of town development (1680); opposition to adjournment of the Assembly (1682); prohibition of the exportation of certain raw materials and semi-finished manufactures (1682); and opposition to the removal to Eng­land of jurisdiction over certain types of court cases (1684). ⁵⁷

The idea that private necessity could in some cases obviate the law was recognized in common law and sometimes explicitly incorporated into statute law. At a mundane level, the Assembly regularly renewed a law that condemned breaking the Sabbath except where exempted by “works of necessity.” ⁵⁸ But necessity also played a role in the high-stakes rhetoric of rebellion. During the Interregnum, Berke­ley, Council, and Assembly defended themselves against Parliamentary charges as “Rebells and Traitors,” claiming “our judgments and industry, have been long solely and necessarily imployed in providing against the necessities of our poore families, and by Consequence should not presume that any Act or Transaction of ours could be worthy the publique view” and hoping for “charitable and abler judg­ments.” ⁵⁹ In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon turned the tables on Berkeley, claiming the “necessity” of the “cominality” to justify his rebellion. ⁶⁰

Liberties and the Common Good

The Virginia colonists, as true Englishmen, were staunch defenders of their liberties. With rigid Company controls in the earliest years fresh in their minds, colo­nists in the 1620s and 1630s were highly suspicious of any outside attempts at infringement and the suspicions persis­ted into later decades. ⁶¹ One of the most important liber­ties, stated frequently in no uncertain terms, was the free benefit and use of their labor and property that Virginians traced to the arrival of Sir George Yeardley and the “Great Charter” of November 1618 by which “free libertie was given to all men to make choice of their dividents of lande and, as their abilities and meanes would permitt, to possesse and plant uppon them.” ⁶² Governor Harvey, like later Virgin­ians, claimed “the same freedome of his Majestie’s other subjects to seek our best marquett.” ⁶³ In contrast to Com­monwealth England, in Virginia (declared the Assembly in 1651) “the Gates of wealth and Honour are shut on no man, and…there is not here an Arbitrary hand that dares to touch the sub­stance of either poore or rich.”

Such ideas, however, did not turn these Virginians into laissez-faire liberals. The Grand Assembly nominally re­spected the right of individuals to do what they would with their property or labor and was always constrained to justi­fy any incursion into such liberties in acts of Assembly, but liberties always took second place to the common good of the colony with its demand for limits on the individual pursuit of wealth. ⁶⁴ Similarly, the Crown and its repre­sen­­ta­tives recognized “the Freedome and…the benefit of your owne Trade and Labours” when such freedoms did not conflict with Crown revenues and customs, “the Glory of God, the Honour of his most sacred Majestie…, [the] publique Good, and long lasting welfare” of the colony. ⁶⁵ Universal sup­port in the colonies for a double standard which prohib­ited tobacco production by English farmers can only be under­stood in terms of the good of the entire English empire. The inferior status of liberties was only con­fused by the cen­tral (if ambiguous) role that liberties played in the defi­nition of the common good, which led sometimes to situations where the common good demanded the sacrifice of one’s liber­ties in times of crises in order to preserve those very liberties in the long run. ⁶⁶

In “the politics of empire” the question was not whe­ther liberties should be regulated for the common good, but who was to decide the common good and thus who was to regu­late liberties. ⁶⁷ Thus, on the basis of prudence and local knowledge, the Assembly, while imposing its own constraints, opposed Crown efforts to regulate tobacco planting, tending, and curing which would reduce the quality and quantity of tobacco, lead to poverty, and take away precious time from the development of other staples. ⁶⁸ And, as in any politi­cal situation, different groups inevitably held different images of the common good. Differences arose between English and provincial mercantilist policies, wonderfully captured in the writings of Sir William Berkeley, Robert Beverley, and other less articulate Virginians. ⁶⁹ Similarly, at times intracolonial divisions emerged when the Burgesses, Council, and Governor challenged each other’s concept of the common good. ⁷⁰

The common good demanded both the imposition and remov­al of constraints on liberty. While some laws claimed that constraints on tobacco production (and the promise of higher tobacco prices) would attract the virtuous and the industri­ous to the colony, other laws claimed that only “the free benefitt & use of our comodity” would attract such citi­zens. ⁷¹ Just as condemnations of avaricious merchants and particular enslaving interests warranted the need for re­strictions on trade, such criticisms likewise justified free trade to force competition between merchants. ⁷² When re­strictions on forestalling and engrossing proved contrary to the common good (for example, as inhibiting the servant trade by prohibiting a just reward for the speculative risk resulting from seasoning), trade restrictions were re­moved. ⁷³ Citing the precedent of other countries with land shortages (leading to frequent grain shortages) which justi­fied regulation of the corn trade, the Assembly declared in 1632 that since Virginia possessed abundant land, she should maintain free trade in corn‑-although like good mercantil­ists they continued to enforce production minima, regulate import and export prices, and prohibit grain exports follow­ing poor harvests. ⁷⁴ Sometimes the Assembly justified remo­val of constraints based on the identical “common good” argument they had used to justify the original constraints. Indeed, within the span of a year, the Assembly justified both the passage and the repeal of an act for the creation of markets on the basis of inconvenience. Other times they treated the reinstitution of liberties more subtly than the imposition of constraints, as de facto rather than de jure liberties due to the lack of enforcement or failure to clarify ambiguous laws. ⁷⁵

Undoubtedly the most important aspect of Virginia liberties revolved around tobacco, as they so often noted, their sole commodity and “cheefest releefe and subsis­tance.” ⁷⁶ With regard to tobacco planting, Virginians well understood liberty to mean the freedom to plant, tend, and market whatever quantity and quality of the commodity the planter chose: “the free benefitt & use of our comodity” with “every one permetted to make the best he can of his owne comodity.” ⁷⁷ These Virginians equally well understood that such unconstrained behavior normally proved contrary to the common good since the tobacco market to some degree was, in our terms, a zero-sum economy, in which one household’s increased production meant decreased incomes for all other households because of the inelastic demand for tobacco (at least in the short-run).

Nevertheless, by the late 1630s, after numerous at­tempts at mercantilist control, Virginians were clearly more and more coming to accept liberty of planting as most con­sistent with the commonweal, although in a fashion that could hardly be called unilinear and could at best be called “confused” from a modern perspective. With rising competi­tion from unconstrained tobacco production in the West Indies and Maryland, simple justice demanded that either all his Majesty’s colonists had to conform to corporate restric­tions on tobacco quality and quantity or all should be granted equal liberty. ⁷⁸ Similar arguments for liberty of planting appeared from the 1630s to the 1690s, but were especially prominent in the 1660s. In 1662, the Burgesses dismissed “abridgment of any man’s endeavours or confining him to any sett number of plants” while Maryland remained a distinct government as “cleerly inconsistant with the being of the country.” Yet, engaging in a bit of casuistry in order to gain an advantage over Maryland, they justified a stint after July 10 as consistent with the common good. The next year Edmund Scarburgh challenged the proposed stint on the grounds that “the people of Maryland have privilege to plant as long as they please, soe they having such a privi­ledge and we bound up it will be a great benefit to them and a ruin to us.” The Burgesses finally relented in 1664, “not thinking fitt to lay a restriction upon this govt while they [Maryland] have soe greate a liberty.” ⁷⁹

Since the Crown never showed much interest in either regulating or enforcing such restrictions, the Assembly inevitably gave up what Edmund Morgan calls the attempt “to legislate the boom back into existence.” ⁸⁰ Not that recog­ni­tion of liberty of planting came easily, for with every crisis of a tobacco glut and lower prices came resurgent echoes of the corporate mentality and demands for con­straints, only to succumb to liberty with the failure to draw all the other tobacco-producing colonies into the scheme. ⁸¹ In the late seventeenth century the Assembly passed a number of bills stinting tobacco production on the basis of the necessity of the planters, only to turn around and repeal the laws as leading to even further poverty. ⁸² In much the same fashion, the Assembly ap­proached the Indian trade, in 1659 grudgingly passing an act acknowl­edging the necessity of allowing the trade of arms for furs in order to compete with other colonies in the Indian fur trade, only to repeal the act the next year. ⁸³ Market pres­sures forced planters to compete in a world beyond their power to legis­late, and perhaps provided the major reason for the vehe­mence with which they complained about the govern­ments of Maryland and North Carolina. ⁸⁴

The espousal of liberty to plant did not subvert the traditional relationship to the common good. The open decla­ration of liberty to plant as a principle freed from consid­erations of Crown and Commonwealth remained as seditious in the 1690s as it did on that day in 1635 when Samuel Mathews, John Utie, and William Pierce “opposed themselves very saucely” against Governor Harvey’s “proposition for the Tobacco Contract, sayeing that his Majestie could not re­strayne them in Virginia from Planting upon their owne Land what they pleased,” with Pierce adding “that the Officers which went to represse the Tobacco planting in England were well beaten for their labour.” ⁸⁵ However twisted by Harvey, this anecdote readily demonstrates why naked liberty never flourished in the seventeenth century. Virginians, like all Englishmen, understood that proclaiming liberty as the ulti­mate ideal in defiance of the “Royall pleasure” or acts of Parliament or Assembly was highly seditious. ⁸⁶ For the record, when the 1638 Assembly attempted to sway the Crown to remove or lessen tobacco restrictions they mentioned nothing about liberty to plant, justifying the act rather on the dubiousness of the compliance of other plantations and on the common good. ⁸⁷

The de jure acceptance of liberty of planting in the late 1630s and early 1640s as most consistent with the common good was hardly straightforward, following the ups and downs of Sir John Harvey’s career and the tobacco mar­ket. After the “thrusting out” of Harvey, the mutinous Assembly led by Samuel Mathews and others passed, in 1636, the first law for “planting tobacco without restraint.” Upon the return of Harvey in 1637 the law was either repealed or modified by a bill for “regulating Tobacco.” In 1638 the Assembly broke with Governor Harvey and his Council by openly opposing restrictions on tobacco production. On the other hand, under Governor Wyatt, the 1639/40 Assembly passed undoubtedly the most heavily mercantilist tobacco act of the seventeenth century. ⁸⁸ Finally, with the March 1642/3 Assembly, the first under Governor William Berkeley, freedom to plant became the law of the land. When this Assembly began its major revision of earlier laws, they repealed all earlier acts and significantly failed to pass any new acts on tobacco price, marketing, quality, or quan­tity. ⁸⁹ Thus with a remarkable lack of fanfare did the government estab­lish the policy of liberty of one’s commodi­ty, not with any positive step of commission with elaborate justification in defense of English liberties, but by the subtle act of omission.

Over the course of the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century the Assembly went through phases of tightening restrictions on tobacco and never ceased to desire some intercolonial scheme to regulate production, and colonial leaders never stopped condemning the dependence on tobacco. Nevertheless, after the 1642/3 Assembly, tobac­co production operated relatively free from constraints until the imposition of the Tobacco Inspection acts of the eight­eenth century. The Assembly went through brief phases (1656-63, 1686-96) of attempting to restrict planting after a certain date, but ultimately abandoned these schemes with the refusal of Maryland and/or North Carolina to cooper­ate. ⁹⁰ A similar sporadic “liberalization” appeared in other aspects of the economy throughout the seventeenth century. By the mid-seventeenth century, restrictions on the Indian fur trade, merchant profits, forestalling, and en­grossing gradually eroded, perhaps reflecting the increasing domi­nance of the planter-merchant. ⁹¹

However, in none of these cases can one say that liber­ties superseded the common good. Whether reflecting grudging acceptance of the world market or the particular interests of merchant-planters, liberties were permitted only insofar as they contributed to or were at least non-detrimental to the common good. Furthermore, Virginians‑-like early seven­teenth-century moderate Parliamentarians and more conserva­tive Englishmen after the Restoration‑-never adopted the new English language of interests, maintaining instead the traditional language of the commonwealth ideology. The major ideological challenge to this conservative consensus came with Nathaniel Bacon’s inflammatory appeals to the “commonality.” But even here one can agree with Bertram Wyatt-Brown that Bacon’s rhetoric rested, like that of latter day Southern populists, more on traditional concepts of honor and justice than on liberal­ism. ⁹² In the com­plaints collected by the Commissioners after the rebellion, the people, in complaining about the injustice of taxation, sometimes defined the common good in terms of the welfare of families and posterity, but such rhetoric was hardly radical when interpreted in terms of traditional necessity. Wherever one looks in the records of seven­teenth-century Virgin­ia, one can find scant evidence of the positive acceptance of interest politics on ethical grounds. ⁹³

Evidence of constraints on liberties in the pursuit of wealth do not necessarily confirm the dominance of a parti­cular economic or political ethic. Regulations in themselves do not necessarily contradict chrematistics since they can simply serve to channel economic behavior rather than as an overall ethical limitation. Indeed, that the infinite pur­suit of wealth within the context of an ever-expanding house­hold was permissible, never discouraged, and even posi­tively encouraged in colonial Virginia might suggest chrema­tistics. Similarly, such constraints can be made consistent with economic and political liberalism if justi­fied on the basis that limitless acquisition interfered with the liber­ties of others and the harm done to individual interests outweighed the benefits. But seventeenth-century Virginians simply never thought in such a manner. Immersed in a world of liberties, common good, competency, justice, and necessi­ty, they could not conceive of the positive encouragement of the unlimited pursuit of wealth‑-so closely associated with the sin of avarice‑-as a good in itself.

The Limits of the Normative Ideal

What stands out most clearly in both England and Vir­ginia is the dynamism and malleability of the traditional language when applied to any particular policy. Indeed, one might say that seemingly anything could be and was justified within the context of the common good. Clearly, to under­stand the mind (let alone to understand the relationship between mind and behavior) of these Englishmen we need to move beyond the normative ideal.

No matter how much one analyzes the ethics of a parti­cular time and place, the ultimate question is: What do these ethics have to do with the way people actually thought and behaved? Do ethics merely serve as hypocritical rheto­ric? Post-hoc rationalizations? Unconscious self-deception? De facto acknowledgment of man’s propensity to behave con­tra­ry to such ethics? Constraints on behavior only to the degree they are backed by institutions and sanctions? A reflection of deeply shared beliefs which fundamentally guide behavior? Or something else altoge­ther? Contemporaries readily acknowledged that de jure prescriptions frequently differed from de facto behavior. For example, although many writers stressed the natural right to steal food in times of necessity, they contrasted this right with the actual capi­tal punishment meted out to thieves regardless of their condition. ⁹⁴

Furthermore, what did such ideas, expressed by the intellectual elite, have to do with the common people? Although commonwealth ideology‑-with its central values of competency, justice, liberty, necessity, and the common­weal‑-shared a close affinity with the honor and gentility stressed by cultural and intellectual historians and the moral economy and artisanal republicanism attributed by E. P. Thompson and his followers to the English and American working classes, we should not remain content with simply presuming a priori the nature of the relationship between ethics and behavior. ⁹⁵ Although we should not go to the opposite extreme of cynically dismissing normative ideals, clearly before understanding the role of such ideals in the lives of seventeenth-century Englishmen on either side of the Atlantic we need to look beyond the normative.

In essence, we return to the question at the heart of the new social history, the challenge that Darrett B. Rutman raised to Perry Miller’s Puritans: How can one reconcile such traditional ideals with the modern behavior that histo­rians believe these Virginians actually exhibited? ⁹⁶ For all the positive good that they did by making the discipline more theoretically and empirically rigorous, the new social historians hardly dented the age-old mind-behavior problem, tending to sidestep the whole issue of mind to focus solely on behavior. Both social and intellectual historians quickly got the message that any solution required more than blindly accepting the materialist position of ignoring formal ideas as epiphenomena or the idealist position of unproblemati­cally equating formal ideas with behavior–a recognition quite apparent in such diverse developments in the 1960s and 1970s as Rutman’s own American Puritanism, Robert F. Berk­hofer, Jr.’s “behavioral approach” to history, James A. Henretta’s mentalité, and the popularization of the ideas of anthropo­logist Clifford Geertz within mainstream historiog­raphy. ⁹⁷ But if seventeenth-century Virginia may serve as an example, early American historians continue to miscon­strue the mind-behavior problem at several levels of analy­sis: missing the subtleties of expressed ideals, ignoring or distorting contemporary conceptions about human behavior, disregarding representative actual beha­vior, and finally failing to incorporate these different levels into a coher­ent synthesis. This failure has left seventeenth-century Virginia historiography stuck in the Wertenbaker-Bruce framework of dichotomous ideals and behavior.

In particular, historians have paid little attention to what Berkhofer calls one of the most fatal, persistent problems in modern historiography: the failure to explicitly differentiate between “ideal” and “operative” values and between “expected” and “actual” behavior. Obsessed with ideal values and actual behavior, historians have paid little attention to operative values or expected behav­ior. ⁹⁸ The observation gives us our direction, and in the next chapter we will shift from the ideal to the opera­tive, from the way seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britons (or at least their more literate members) believed men should behave to the way they believed men actually did behave.