actures amonge ourselves.... Be it enacted by the authority of
this grand assembly that within two yeares at furthest after the date
of this act, the commissioners of each county court shall provide and
sett up a loome and weaver in each of the respective counties."[204]

The corruption and mismanagement that attended these measures made
them unsuccessful, and as time went on the planters became more and
more impoverished. The Virginians chafed bitterly under the harsh
enforcement of the law of 1660. Governor Berkeley when asked by the
Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations in 1671 what obstructions
there were to the improvement of trade and commerce in Virginia,
answered with his accustomed vigor, "Mighty and destructive, by that
severe act of Parliament which excludes us the having any commerce
with any other nation in Europe but our own.... If this were for his
majesty's service, or the good of his subjects, we should not repine,
whatever our sufferings are for it; but on my soul, it is the contrary
of both."[205]

Berkeley had gone to England in 1661, and while there exerted his
influence for the repeal of the act, but had been able to accomplish
nothing. The desire of the English to crush the Dutch trade was so
strong that they could not be induced to consider at all the welfare
of the colonies. The powerful and logical appeal of Bland also was
unheeded. This remarkable man, who seems to have understood fully the
operation of economic laws that were only established as truths many
years later, explained clearly the harmful consequences of the act
and demanded that justice be done the colonists. "Then let me," he
says, "on behalf of the said colonies of Virginia and Maryland make
the following proposals which I hope will appear but equitable:

"First, that the traders to Virginia and Maryland from England shall
furnish and supply the planters and inhabitants of those colonies with
all sorts of commodities and necessaries which they may want or
desire, at as cheap rates and prices as the Hollanders used to have
when the Hollander was admitted to trade thither.

"Secondly, that the said traders out of England to those colonies
shall not only buy of the planter such tobacco in the colonies as is
fit for England, but take off all that shall be yearly made by them,
at as good rates and prices as the Hollanders used to give for the
same....

"Thirdly, that if any of the inhabitants or planters of the said
colo