petitor of the English shoe manufacturers in countries lying outside of its own borders. The Assembly had, in 1660, adopted rules which would furnish this class of workmen, it was supposed, with an ample market at home. Each county was instructed to erect a tan-house and to employ tanners, carriers, and shoemakers. There was appointed for each house an overseer, who was directed to receive all hides brought in, paying two pounds of tobacco for each pound of hide. To the persons presenting hides he was required to sell plain shoes at the rate of thirty pounds a pair. French falls of the largest size were to be sold to such persons at the rate of thirty-five pounds a pair, whilst those of the smallest were to be sold at twenty pounds. A penalty of five thousand pounds of tobacco was imposed upon every county that failed to erect a tan-house in pursuance of this legislative act.[1]
By the law of 1682, the rule prohibiting the exportation of hides and skins, tanned and untanned, together with the other articles named, was reëstablished on the ground, as has already been pointed out, that it would give employment to many idle and suffering people, besides supplying the Colony with manufactured goods. The penalty for sending out hides and skins, or leather worked up into wearing apparel, was, by the terms of this measure, fixed at one hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco. The shipowner and seamen detected in the act of transporting these articles from Virginia, were subject to the same punishment as we have seen imposed in the case of wool. The duty of the collectors was the same.[2]
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. II, p. 123. It was under the provisions of this law that the tan-house belonging to York County, referred to in a previous note, was maintained.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 493. The number of skins exported by a single person was often very large. In March, 1682, Richard Buller petitioned the Privy Council for the restoration of one thousand skins, which had been seized on account of the violation of the Act in force forbidding exportation of hides.
