What's the result
of that? You, as a merchant, can tell me fine. The English fix what
price they like for our goods, and it's the lowest conceivable, and
they make their own price for what they sell us, and that's as high as
a Jew's. There's a fine profit there for the gentlemen-venturers of
Bristol, but it's starvation and damnation for us poor Virginians."
"What's the result?" he cried again. "Why, that there's nothing to be
had in the land except what the merchants bring. There's scarcely a
smith or a wright or a cobbler between the James and the Potomac. If I
want a bed to lie in, I have to wait till the coming of the tobacco
convoy, and go down to the wharves and pay a hundred pounds of
sweet-scented for a thing you would buy in the Candleriggs for twenty
shillings. How, in God's name, is a farmer to live if he has to pay
usury for every plough and spade and yard of dimity!"
"Remember you're speaking to a merchant," I said. "You've told me the
very thing to encourage me. If prices are high, it's all the better for
me."
"It would be," he said grimly, "if your name werena what it is, and you
came from elsewhere than the Clyde. D'you think the proud English
corporations are going to let you inside? Not them.
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