Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/234

 of justice was revived without regard to the business of the creditor. The transfer of spirits by the wholesale on shipboard was expressly excepted from the scope of this prohibition. Although it was stated that the rule that such debts should not be pleadable was to be perpetual, ten years had barely passed away before it was found necessary to establish rates for the sale of liquors by retail, which undoubtedly gave validity to obligations thus created. The interval between 1645, when the first schedule of prices was adopted, and 1657, when the second, covered only the period of a decade, and yet it is found that in this length of time, the rates for malaga, canary, sherry, muscadine, and allegant had doubled, while madeira and fayal had advanced from twenty pounds of tobacco a gallon to fifty; French wines, from fifteen to thirty; English spirits, from eighty to one hundred and twenty; and brandy or aquavit&aelig; from forty to sixty. The decline in the price of the leaf in this interval was a partial explanation of the increase in the rates.

We have evidence that the retailers were in the habit of mixing the cheaper with the dearer, and of adulterating it still more grossly with a view to a larger profit. In the event that the fraud was discovered, the Commissioners of the Court in the jurisdiction of which the act was committed were authorized to order the constable of the county to stave the casks containing the liquor condemned. Special rates were permitted in the sale of spirits by retail at Jamestown during the session of the Assembly in the spring of 1658. The keepers of ordinaries could dispose of their Spanish wines for thirty pounds of tobacco a quart, or one hundred and twenty pounds a gallon, this being a quadruple advance upon the rates at which these wines were allowed to be sold in 1645,