large premium should be granted to any one who succeeded in making during the course of a single year an amount of this commodity that could be sold for two hundred pounds sterling; at the same session, it was further enacted that five thousand pounds of tobacco should be presented to any person who could show that he had produced one hundred pounds of merchantable silk. So little effect did this measure have, that in the following session the Assembly, in despair, offered to pay ten thousand pounds as a prize for the manufacture of every fifty pounds of silk, thus doubling the reward and diminishing the amount to be made by one-half.[1] Every owner of land in fee in Virginia had, four years previous to this, been required by a special law, for every one hundred acres in his possession, to plant ten mulberry trees, which were to be inserted in the ground twelve feet apart and protected by a fence. This work was to be finished by the close of 1658. In 1659, this law was repealed because it was found to be more burdensome and troublesome than advantageous to the country.[2] The mere fact that it was necessary to provide for a compulsory planting of mulberry trees was a strong indication that silk culture had no hold upon the inclinations or the interests of the people of the Colony. The repeal of the statute was in itself an admission that no substantial good was accomplished by it. The real explanation of the indifference to silk husbandry in Virginia at this, as well as at every other period in her history, was to be discovered in the statement which Lord Culpeper made in 1682, that her inhabitants
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