purpose; and it was only to be withdrawn to be carried on board ship and transported out of Virginia. All tobacco found in the barns of the planters, after the thirty-first day of December, was to be confiscated, unless reserved for the use of their families, a fact to which they were required to swear before the proper officers previous to the closing day of the year. The warehouses appear at this time to have been designed wholly for the storage of leaf, as by the provisions of the law under the authority of which they were to be erected, the goods imported into the Colony were to be landed only at Jamestown, where all the contracts, bargains, and exchanges for any part of this merchandise were to be made. The right, however, was granted to the planters to pay their debts at the warehouses.[1]
At the session of the General Assembly held in the course of the summer following the passage of these amendments of the inspection law, further changes were introduced. The number of warehouses to be erected was increased from five to seven, the additional two to be built, one at Warrasquoke, and the other at a point lying between Wyanoke and the Falls. The viewers to serve at each warehouse were to include not only the member of the Council whose residence was situated the nearest to it, but also the commissioners of the local court, with whom assistants duly appointed were to be joined, and they were to make an inspection of the leaf brought in as often as its volume required.
It would appear that the requirements of the inspection
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. I, p. 204.
