It should be noted that, in general, the history of pottery making in colonial America is fragmentary and inconclusive. Scattered documents bear hints of potters and their activities, and occasional archeological deposits contain the broken sherds and other material evidence of potters' products. Difficulty in obtaining information about early pottery manufacture may be related in large part to a reluctance on the part of the colonists to reveal evidence of manufacturing activity to the Crown authorities. It was the established principle of the Mother Country to integrate the colonial economy into her mercantile system, which was run primarily for her own benefit. As a consequence, there increasingly developed a contest between those who sought to protect English manufactures by discouraging production of colonial goods and those who, in America, tried to enlarge colonial self-sufficiency, the latter inevitably resorting to evasion and suppression of evidence in order to gain their advantage. The outlines of this struggle are suggested in the laws and official reports relating to colonial manufactures. In Virginia, during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, influential landowners encouraged manufactures as a way to offset the dominance of tobacco in the colony, while several acts were passed in the Virginia Assembly to establish official port towns which, it was thought, would result in flourishing craft communities. Although, for a variety of reasons inherent in Virginia's economy and geography, most of these failed, the acts nonetheless were consistently opposed by the Crown authorities. The 1704 Act for Ports and Towns, for example, was vetoed by the Crown in 1709 for the following reasons: The whole Act is designed to Encourage by great Priviledges the settling in Townships, and such settlements will encourage their going on with the Woolen and other Manufactures there. And should this Act be Confirmed, the Establishing of Towns and Incorporating of the Planters as intended thereby, will put them upon further Improvements of the said manufactures, and take them off from the Planting of Tobacco, which would be of very ill consequence, not only in respect to the Exports of our Woolen and other Goods and Consequently to the Dependance that Colony ought to have on this Kingdom, but likewise in respect to the Importation of Tobacco hither for the home and Foreign Consumption, Besides a further Prejudice in relation to our shipping and navigation.[185]