At this crisis an attempt was made to turn the energies of the people to manufacture. The Assembly offered rewards for the best pieces of linen and woolen cloth spun in the colony,[203] and put a bounty on the manufacture of silk. A law was passed requiring each county to erect tan-houses, while encouragement was given to a salt works on the Eastern Shore. Bounties were also offered for ship-building. In 1666 a bill was passed making it compulsory for the counties to enter upon the manufacture of cloth. The reading of this act shows that the Assembly understood fully the causes of the distress of the people. It begins: "Whereas the present obstruction of trade and the nakedness of the country doe sufficiently evidence the necessity of providing supply of our wants by improving all means of raysing and promoteing manuffactures amonge ourselves.... Be it enacted by the authority of this grand assembly that within two yeares at furthest after the date of this act, the commissioners of each county court shall provide and sett up a loome and weaver in each of the respective counties."[204] The corruption and mismanagement that attended these measures made them unsuccessful, and as time went on the planters became more and more impoverished. The Virginians chafed bitterly under the harsh enforcement of the law of 1660. Governor Berkeley when asked by the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations in 1671 what obstructions there were to the improvement of trade and commerce in Virginia, answered with his accustomed vigor, "Mighty and destructive, by that severe act of Parliament which excludes us the having any commerce with any other nation in Europe but our own.... If this were for his majesty's service, or the good of his subjects, we should not repine, whatever our sufferings are for it; but on my soul, it is the contrary of both."[205] Berkeley had gone to England in 1661, and while there exerted his influence for the repeal of the act, but had been able to accomplish nothing. The desire of the English to crush the Dutch trade was so strong that they could not be induced to consider at all the welfare of the colonies. The powerful and logical appeal of Bland also was unheeded. This remarkable man, who seems to have understood fully the operation of economic laws that were only established as truths many years later, explained clearly the harmful consequences of the act and demanded that justice be done the colonists. "Then let me," he says, "on behalf of the said colonies of Virginia and Maryland make the following proposals which I hope will appear but equitable: "First, that the traders to Virginia and Maryland from England shall furnish and supply the planters and inhabitants of those colonies with all sorts of commodities and necessaries which they may want or desire, at as cheap rates and prices as the Hollanders used to have when the Hollander was admitted to trade thither.