Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/424

 strain of the prospects of flax culture. There was no disinclination on the part of the planters to pursue it, but a lack of laborers who were skilled in it. Many persons, who would have turned their attention to the production of this commodity, were deterred from doing so by their pecuniary inability to undergo the losses which were certain to accompany an unsuccessful experiment. Governor Berkeley acknowledged that he himself had incurred an expense of one thousand pounds in flax culture, but had accomplished nothing on account of the wilfulness of the Frenchmen whom he had employed to attend to it, and he requested the Council in England to consider the advisability of transporting a number of experts to the Colony in order to impart to its inhabitants information as to the proper method of developing this industry. In the following year he wrote to Secretary Bennett, who had been created Lord Arlington, that he had a present of three hundred pounds of silk for the King, but was prevented from forwarding it by his apprehension lest it should be captured by the hostile ships cruising off the Capes in expectation of outward bound merchantmen.

In the autumn, silk husbandry had reached such a stage of development, and so many persons had demonstrated its profitableness, that the Assembly, with a view to reserving for the public funds the tobacco which was in the course of distribution in the form of premiums, recalled the substantial inducements extended to those who would engage in it, and repealed the law making the planting of mulberry trees compulsory. This step was