Like his fishing predecessors ever since Jamestown, Washington had his troubles with salt. One of his business letters ordering a supply complained: "Liverpool salt is inadequate to the saving of fish.... Lisbon is the proper kind." He was only briefly touching on a subject that had vexed the Colonists since the beginning. Through the years the cry for more and better salt had gone up. The fishermen of Virginia needed salt for their fish as badly as the Hebrews in Egypt needed straw for their bricks. Although trading with foreign countries increased steadily, the question of a salt supply for Virginia remained unsolved. As the 18th century had progressed, matters grew even worse. In 1763 the Virginia Committee of Correspondence had written urgently to its agent in London to apply to Parliament for an act to allow to this Colony the same liberty to import salt from Lisbon or any other European ports, which they have long enjoyed in the Colonies and provinces of New England, New York and Pennsylvania. This is a point that hath been more than once unsuccessfully labored; but we think it is so reasonable, that when it is set in a proper light, we shall hope for success. The reason upon which the opposition hath been supported, is this general one that it is contrary to the interest of Great Britain to permit her plantations to be supplied with any commodity, especially any manufacture from a foreign country, which she herself can supply them with. This we allow to be of force; provided the Mother Country can and does supply her plantations with as much as they want; but the fact being otherwise, we have been allowed to supply ourselves with large quantities from Cercera, Isle of May, Sal Tortuga and so forth. The course of this trade being hazardous, in time of war, this useful and necessary article hath been brought to us at a high price of late. The reason or pretence of granting this indulgence to the Northern Colonies, in exclusion of the Southern, we presume to be to enable them to carry on their fishery to greater advantage, the salt from the Continent of Europe being fitter for that purpose than the salt from Great Britain or that from any of the islands we have mentioned. But surely this reason is but weakly founded with respect to Pennsylvania, whose rivers scarcely supply them with fish sufficient for their own use; whereas the Bay of Chesapeake abounds with great plenty and variety of fish fit for foreign markets, as well as for ourselves, if we could but get the proper kind of salt to cure it. Herrings and shads might be exported to the West Indies to great advantage; and we could supply the British markets with finer sturgeon than they have yet tasted from the Baltic. And it is an allowed principle that every extension of the trade of the Colonies, which does not interfere