558 
Destruction  of  Tobacco. 
(  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
t   November,  1897. 
"  Enacted,  that  the  tobacco  of  that  year  be  viewed  by  sworn 
viewers,  and  the  rotten  and  unmerchantable  and  half  the  good  to  be 
burned." 
"  So  the  whole  quantity  made  would  come  to  1,500,000  pounds 
without  stripping  and  smoothing,  and  the  next  two  years  170  pounds 
tobacco  per  poll,  stripped  and  smoothed,  was  to  be  made,  which 
would  make,  on  the  whole,  about  1 ,300,000  pourids,  and  all  creditors 
were  to  take  40  pounds  for  100." 
ACT  11. 
"  No  man  should  be  obliged  to  perform  above  half  his  covenants 
about  freighting  tobacco  in  1639." 
Adjoined  to  the  copy  of  these  Acts  we  find  the  following,  added 
by  Hening,  to  show  his  authority: 
"These  acts  are  printed  from  a  MS.  which  belonged  to  Thomas 
Jefferson,  President  of  the  United  States,  and  which  is  now  in  the 
Library  of  Congress  at  Washington.. 
"This  MS.  volume  is  lettered  'Writings  Related  to  Virginia'  and 
contains  most  of  the  old  charters,  instructions  to  the  governors,  etc. 
At  the  end  of  the  volume  is  an  abstract  of  public  papers,  taken  from 
the  rolls,  the  number  and  page  of  which  are  referred  to,  but  without 
regard  to  chronological  order.  The  Acts  of  1639  appear  to  be  a 
mere  abridgement,  and,  from  the  handwriting  and  orthography,  it 
seems  to  have  been  made  long  posterior  to  their  date. 
".  This  abstract  concludes  with  a  list  of  the  governors  of  Virginia 
down  to  the  year  1722,  at  which  time,  or  shortly  afterwards,  it  was 
probably  compiled. 
"The  handwriting,  on  comparison,  appears  to  be  that  of  '  R.  Hick- 
mann,'  by  whom,  as  '  clerk  of  the  secretary's  office,'  several  public 
papers  are  attested." 
In  connection  with  the  foregoing,  as  an  evidence  that  "  history 
repeats  itself,"  we  find  that  the  president  of  the  Cotton  Growers' 
Association  has  recently  (1897)  advocated  the  destruction  of  part  of 
the  cotton  crop  of  the  South,  in  order  to  increase  the  price  of  that 
which  remains.  A  paper  headed  "  Signs  of  the  Times,"  in  the 
Nation,  March  4,  1897,  prints  the  following,  thus  showing  that  the 
method  adopted  250  years  ago  has  met  the  theorist  of  to-day : 
"  Signs  of  the  Times  The  Southern  farmers  are  again  showing 
that  it  is  not  the  principle  of  combination  to  which  they  are  opposed, 
but  the  use  of  that  principle  by  any  other  class  of  people  than  farmers 
