"Owing to these causes the planters kept on raising tobacco with hardly sufficient intermission to provide sustenance, though often, by reason of the excessive quantity raised, scarcely anything could be got for it. Tobacco is not now considered peculiarly and excessively exhaustive; in a judicious rotation, especially as a preparation for wheat, it is an admirable fallow crop, and, under a scientific system of agriculture, it is grown with no continued detriment to the soil. But in Virginia it was grown without interruption or alternation, and the plantations rapidly deteriorated in fertility. As they did so, the crops grew smaller in proportion to the labor expended upon them; yet, from the continued importation of laborers, the total crops of the colony increased annually, and the market value fell proportionately to the better supply. "With smaller return for labor and lower prices, the planters soon found themselves bankrupt, instead of nabobs. How could they help themselves? Only by forcing the merchants to pay them higher prices. But how to do that, when every planter had his crop pledged in advance, and was obliged to hurry it off at any price he could get for it, in order to pay for his food, and drink, and clothing, and to keep his head above water at credit for the following year. The crop supplied more tobacco than was needed, but no one man would cease to plant it, or lessen his crop for the general good. Then it was agreed all men must be made to do so, and the colonial legislature was called upon to make them. "Acts were accordingly passed to prevent any planter from cultivating more than a certain number of plants to each hand he employed in labor, and prescribing the number of leaves which might be permitted to ripen upon each plant permitted to be grown. An inspection of all tobacco, after it had been prepared for market, was decreed, and the inspectors were bound by oath, after having rejected all of inferior quality, to divide the good into two equal parts, and then to burn and destroy one of them. Thus, it was expected the quantity of tobacco offered for sale would be so small that merchants would be glad to pay better prices for it, and the planters would be relieved of their embarrassment." Mrs. M. P. Handy gives the following interesting sketch, entitled "On the Tobacco Plantation":-- [Illustration: "Burning the patch."]