The First Charter of Virginia; April 10 1606

The authors of this document are Lukin, the Kings of England, Scotland, France and Ireland and other colony people. This document is addressed to the people of the colonies (The Virginia Company) and whoever else was planning on setting up colonies. The tone that the authors set was a somewhat persuasive yet a controlling and serious kind of tone. The purpose of writing this was to persuade people to move into the colonies by telling the people how great life would be for them there. This situation works well with the old saying, "The grass is always greener on the other side." That is also one message that the authors of this document were trying to portray.

They did this by promising things like, "And they shall have all the Lands, Soils, Grounds, Havens, Ports, Rivers, Mines...from the first seat of their Plantation and Habitation by the Space of fifty like English Miles...and that none of our Subjects shall be permitted, or suffered, to plant or inhabit behind...without express License of the Council of that Colony, in Writing thereunto first had and obtained." What this means is that the sooner you rush to the new wonderful colonies, the more benefits you can receive. This is a trick to get people to come over faster, its on a first come, first serve basic. And by promising all this to the people who are planning to move west, all the colonies will get mass amounts of people but will not be able to supply everyone with mass amounts of land. This will only cause problems and more people will be forced to work manual labor to keep a roof over their heads. So the credibility of this document may be somewhat diminished because it is not certain that everyone will be able to have everything they were told they would have in this document.
That could be another potential problem starter, lack of credibility. This document is definitely emotionally persuasive. Imagine being dirt poor in a place where there is no opportunity for you there. Then you hear about this new land, this new hope, and all you can do is dream about this wonderland. From what the document says, you can start fresh and there is much room for you to grow in the colonies. That is enough to cause that family to sell everything they have so they can earn enough money to move to this new wonderland. But since there are so many other people doing the same, is it really going to be as amazing as everyone had been lead to believe?

My answer would be no. My reasoning for that response is the same as my example above. Another example is if there is 50,000 quarters in a jar, someone wrote a document saying that everyone could go to this jar and get a quarter, so everyone rushes to this jar, but there are 70,000 people. See the problem? There may be loads of quarters in that jar, but once everyone rushes to that jar, it ends up running low and there are not enough quarters for everyone. That is what I believe did happen with this document, personally I do not know the outcome of this document, but I believe the authors of it bit off a chunk more than they could chew.