courts the authority to order warehouses inconvenient to the
landings discontinued. These two pieces of legislation brought all of
the public warehouses near convenient landings and made the warehouse
movement flexible. From this point on, as the tobacco industry shifted
from one area to another, the warehouse movement kept pace. From time
to time established warehouses were ordered discontinued, or new ones
erected; and occasionally warehouses ordered discontinued were revived.
However, it appears that inspection warehouses were not permitted above
the Fall Line until after the Revolution.

In 1730 the most comprehensive inspection bill ever introduced, passed
the General Assembly. The common knowledge that the past and present
inspection laws had failed to prevent the importation of unmarketable
tobacco, plus a long depression, had changed the attitude of many of
the influential planters and merchants. Nevertheless, the act did meet
with opposition from some of the English customs officials and a few of
the large planters. Soon after the passage of this new inspection law a
prominent planter wrote complainingly to a London merchant, "This Tobo
hath passed the Inspection of our new law, every hogshead was cased and
viewed by which means the tobacco was very much tumbled and made
something less sightly than it was before and it causes a great deal of
extraordinary trouble". There were complaints that the new law
destroyed tobacco that used to bring good money. Still another planter
complained that the planter's name and evidence on the hogshead had
much more effect on the price of the tobacco than the inspector's
brand. While some of the planters expressed their disapproval of the
new inspection law verbally, others resorted to violence. During the
first year some villains burned two inspection houses, one in Lancaster
County and another in Northumberland.

The inspection law passed in 1730 was frequently amended during the
colonial period, but there were no changes in its essential features.
The act provided that no tobacco was to be shipped except in hogsheads,
cases, or casks, without having first passed an inspection at one of
the legally established inspection warehouses; thus the shipment of
bulk tobacco was prohibited. Two inspectors were employed at each
warehouse, and a third was summoned in case of a dispute between the
two regular inspectors. These officials were bonded and were forbidden
under heavy penalti