"Sam": or The history of mystery./ By C. W. Webber.

50 "SAM:" OR, THE HISTORY OF IMYsTEr,Y.
has historically, and according to a fixed system, coined her
own, as well as the heart's blood of others, into gold.
Conditional servitude under indentures or covenants, had
from the first, existed in Virginia. The servant stood to his
master in the relation of a debtor, bound to discharge the costs
of emigration, by the entire employment of his powers for the
benefit of his creditor. Oppression early ensued; men who
had been transported into Virginia, at an expense of eight
or ten pounds, were sold sometimes for forty, fifty or even
threescore pounds.
The supply of white servants became a regular business,
and a class of men, nicknamed Spirits, used to delude young
persons, servants, and idlers, into embarking for America,
as to a land of spontaneous plenty. White servants came
to be a usual article of traffic. They were sold in England
to be transported, and in Virginia were resold to the highest
bidder, like they were purchased on shipboard, as men buy
horses at a fair. In 1672, the average price in the colonies,
where five years of service were due, was about ten pounds,
while a negro was worth twenty or twenty-five pounds. So
usual was this manner of dealing in Englishmen, that not
the Scots only, who were taken in the field of Quebec, were
sent into involuntary servitude in New England, but the
Royalists, prisoners of the battle of Worcester, and the
leaders in the insurrection of Penruddoc, in spite of the remonstrance of Haselrig and Henry Vane, were shipped to
America.
At the corresponding period, in Ireland, the crowded exportation of Irish Catholics was a frequent event, and was
attended by aggravations, hardly inferior to the usual atrocities of the African slave-trade. In 1685, when nearly a
thousand of the prisoners condemned for participating in the
insurrection of Monmouth, were sentenced to transportation,
men of influence at court, with rival importunity, scrambled
for the convicted insurgents as a merchantable commodity!