scribed in the inspection law of 1629-30, but also in the different amendments which from time to time were made to it. The law itself restricted the number to be raised to two thousand for every individual in a family, women and children inclusive.[1] A subsequent Act prohibited those who were not engaged in the cultivation of the leaf to transfer to persons who were, their right of planting. The landholder was required to procure either a neighbor, or some competent stranger, to count the plants in his fields, and to certify the result to the commander of the place, and if he was found to have exceeded the number allowed, the commissioners were to order the destruction of his whole crop.
The effect of these various regulations, whether strictly enforced or not, must have been on the whole very influential in improving the quality of the tobacco, the need of which, at the beginning of the fourth decade of the seventeenth century, was just as urgent as it was in the middle of the third. In a proclamation issued in 1631, it was stated that an increasing quantity of the commodity was imported secretly into England from the Brazils and the Spanish provinces in America, and this was most probably in response to a continued demand for the highest grades, because Virginia, independently of the Bermudas, could easily have furnished the whole amount required by English consumers.
Harvey began his administration of the affairs of Virginia in the spring of 1630. He had brought over the usual instructions to promote a diversification of the com-
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. I, p. 152.
