Note 138 — Chapter XIV · SOCIETY IN THE OLD DOMINION.

Mr. Bruce has well said that in the seventeenth century the white servant was “the main pillar of the industrial fabric” of Virginia, and “performed the most honourable work in establishing and sustaining” that colony. “There can be no doubt, as he goes on to say, that the work of colonization which has been performed by the people of England surpasses, both in extent and beneficence, that of any other race which has left an impression upon universal history, and the part the manual labourers have taken in this work is not less memorable than the part taken by the higher classes of the nation.” Economic History of Virginia, i. 573, 582.