In 1602, the English had suspended all intercourse with America for sixteen years, in consequence of the unsuccessful attempts of Raleigh.  But, at this time, the intercourse was renewed:  a ship sailed to Virginia, the name then given to the greater part of the east coast of North America; and a traffic was carried on with the Indians for peltry, sassafras, cedar wood, &c.  Captain Gosnol, who commanded this vessel, was a man of considerable skill in his profession, and he is said to have been the first Englishman who sailed directly to North America, and not, as before, by the circuitous course of the West Indies and the Gulf of Florida.  In the subsequent year there was some traffic carried on with the Indians of the continent, and some of the uncolonized West India islands.

Prior to the year 1606 several attempts had been made to colonize different parts of the new world by the English, but they all proved abortive.  In this year, however, a permanent settlement was established near James River, within the Chesapeake.  It is not our plan to detail all the particular settlements, or their progress to maturity; but merely to point out the beginnings of them, as evidence of our extending commerce, and to state such proofs as most strikingly display their improvement and the advantages the mother country derived from them.  In conformity with this plan, we may mention that sugar plantations were first formed in Barbadoes in 1641:  this, as Mr. Anderson, in his History of Commerce, justly observes, “greatly hastened the improvement of our other islands, which soon afterwards followed it in planting sugar to very great advantage.  And, as it was impossible to manage the planting of that commodity by white people in so hot a climate, so neither could sufficient numbers of such be had at any rate.  Necessity, therefore, and the example of Portugal gave birth to the negro slave trade to the coast of Guinea and it is almost needless to add, that such great numbers of slaves, and also the increase of white people in those islands, soon created a vast demand for all necessaries from England, and also a new and considerable trade to Madeira for wines to supply those islands.”  The immediate consequence of the spread of the sugar culture in our West India islands was, that the ports of London and Bristol became the great magazines for this commodity, and supplied all the north and middle parts of Europe; and the price of the Portuguese-Brazil sugars was reduced from 8_l_. to 2_l_. 10_s_. per cwt.

The rapid growth of the English colonies on the continent and in the islands of America, during the seventeenth century, is justly ascribed by Sir Josiah Child, to the emigration thither, occasioned by the persecution of the Puritans by James I. and Charles I.; to the defeat of the Royalists and Scotch by Cromwell; and, lastly, to the Restoration, and the consequent disbanding of the army, and fears of the partizans of Cromwell.  It may be added, that most of the men who were driven to America from these causes, were admirably fitted to form new settlements, being of industrious habits, and accustomed to plain fare and hard work.