Both the Council and the Burgesses expressed their gratitude to Gooch by gifts of money, the former voting him L300 to cover the expense of his voyage to Virginia, and the latter giving him L500. Although his instructions forbade his acceptance, he pocketed the money. "I thought it would not become me to refuse this extraordinary instance of their regard," he wrote the Lords of Trade. There was a precedent for his acceptance, for Nicholson had had L300 when that sum was worth L600 in the present currency. And though the Board censured him, they did not make him refund the money.[12] It was typical of Gooch that he was willing to yield in matters of which he did not fully approve in order to carry points which he had very much at heart. He had not been long in the colony when he came to the conclusion that it would greatly benefit the planters if the tobacco inspection act of 1713 could be revived. But he was well aware that the people had not forgotten the use Spotswood had made of it to gain control of the House of Burgesses, or his veto of the bill to prohibit Burgesses from holding places of profit in the government. So, in return for the passage of a new tobacco law, he assented to an act to keep officeholders out of the House. "The Burgesses were for this bill," he wrote the Lords of Trade, "and my desire to keep them in good humor while matters of greater moment were under their deliberation, prevailed with me to assent to it."[13] But he thought that the act had nothing in its favor, except that it was an imitation of the laws of England made for securing the freedom of Parliament. "In my humble opinion this country is yet too young for so refined a regulation. Places of profit are indeed but few, but men of capacity for the discharge of them do not much more abound; therefore either the government must be ill served, or the House of Burgesses meanly fitted if men of capacity and integrity must be shut out either of the one or the other."[14] Gooch either did not understand the importance of this bill, or deliberately concealed it from the British Government. Had he known of the use of the power of appointment by former Governors to gain control of the House of Burgesses, he could not have dismissed the measure so lightly. Nor could he have realized what a major victory it was for liberty. Henceforth no Berkeley could bribe the Burgesses into submission and so rule the colony like a despot; no Nicholson could hand out commissions as sheriffs, or collectors, or officers in the militia in exchange for votes in the House; no Spotswood could create tobacco agents' jobs to tempt the people's representatives.