In the sixteenth century people began, in many countries, to make considerable improvements in dyeing. For this purpose, new dye-stuffs, both indigenous and foreign, were subjected to experiment, and trials were made with salts which had never before been employed. In this manner dyers sometimes obtained colours which pleased by their novelty and beauty; but it needs excite no surprise that many new methods of dyeing did not produce the desired effect. Many communicated colours which were agreeable to the eye, but they soon faded; and some rendered the dyed cloth so tender that it soon rotted on the shopkeepers’ shelves. Governments conceiving it then necessary to do something for the security of the purchaser, considered the imperfection of the art as a premeditated deception; and as it was at that time supposed that some pigments could give durable and genuine colours, and others fading or false ones; and also that the pernicious effects of salts could not be prevented or moderated, they, in general, prohibited the use of all new materials from which hurtful consequences had been observed to arise. Legislators are neither almighty, omniscient, nor infallible. With the best views, and a firm determination to discharge their duty, they may recommend things hurtful, and prohibit others that might be attended with advantage. Were their commands and prohibitions inviolable, insuperable, and irresistible, they would often confine the progress of the arts and sciences, and render useful inventions impossible. But the people, when they have not entirely become machines, know how to elude, even at great personal hazard, faulty regulations, and by prohibited ways to obtain greater advantages than those which formed the object of the orders issued by their government. This was the case in regard to the art of dyeing in the sixteenth century. A recess of the diet held in 1577, prohibited, under the severest penalties, the newly invented pernicious, deceitful, eating, and corrosive dye called the _devil’s dye_, for which vitriol and other eating substances were used instead of woad. This prohibition was renewed in 1594 and 1603, with the addition of this remark, that, in consequence of the weight of the bad dyes, a pound of undyed silk for sewing or embroidery would produce two or three pounds of dyed[655].