January 3, 1625-6: Proclamation by the Governor and Council of Virginia renewing a former proclamation of August 31, 1623, restraining the excessive rates of commodities—commanding that no person in Virginia, either adventurer or planter, shall vend, utter, barter, or sell any of the commodities following above the prices hereafter mentioned, viz: New Foundland fish, the hundred ... 10 pounds of tobacco; Canada dry fish, the hundred ... 24 pounds of tobacco; Canada wet fish, the hundred.... 30 pounds of tobacco.
In one proposed deal of fish for tobacco the owner of the fish got scared off, as recorded in the Minutes of the Council and General Court, 1622-29:
Luke Edan, sworn and examined, says that there were sixteen thousand fish offered him by one Corbin at Canada which afterward the said Corbin refused to sell him for it was told him his tobacco was not good, and as the examiner heard, it was Henry Hewat that told him so.
A case of special concession for the sale of fish was shown in a ruling of the Virginia Council in 1626:
It is ordered that whereas Mr. Weston came up to James City, he shall sell 3,000 of his fish there, which he has promised to sell at reasonable rates. Therefore, in regard the proclamations are not published for the choosing of merchants and factors, it is permitted that such as are desirous to buy any of the said fish he may have leave to deal with Mr. Weston, notwithstanding orders to the contrary.
Another dissuading factor in the unsubstantial fishing in Virginia was the threat of Indian attack. The Assembly in 1626 ruled:
It is ordered, according to the act of the late General Assembly, that no man go or send abroad either upon fowling, fishing, or otherwise whatsoever without a sufficient plenty of men, well armed and provided of munition, upon penalty of undergoing severe censure of punishment by the Governor and Council.
It was characteristic of Virginia's fisheries that the pessimists occupied the stage for a while, then the optimists. An example of the whipping-up of enthusiasm is this discourse of Edward Williams writing on Virginia at mid-century. China was a fabulous country, therefore he compared Virginia with it. Ideas ran riot as he contemplated the resources crying to be developed:
... What multitudes of fish to satisfy the most voluptuous of wishes, can China glory in which Virginia may not in justice boast of?... Let her publish a precedent so worthy of admiration (and which will not admit belief in those bosoms where the eye cannot be witness of the action) of five thousand fish taken at one draught near Cape Charles, at the entry into Chesapeake bay, and which swells the wonder greater, not one fish under the measure of two feet in length. What fleets come yearly upon the coasts of Newfoundland and New England for fish, with an incredible return? Yet it is a most assured truth that if they would make experiment upon the south of Cape Cod, and from thence to the coast of this happy country, they would find fish of greater delicacy, and as full handed plenty, which though foreigners know not, yet if our own planters would make use of it, would yield them a revenue which cannot admit of any diminution while there are ebbs and floods, rivers feed and receive the ocean, or nature fails in (the elemental original of all things) waters.
There wants nothing but industrious spirits and encouragement to make a rich staple of this commodity; and would the Virginians but make salt pits, in which they have a greater convenience of tides (that part of the universe by reason of a full influence of the moon upon the almost limitless Atlantic causing the most spacious fluxes and refluxes, that any shore of the other divisions in the world is sensible of) to leave their pits full of salt-water, and more friendly and warm sunbeams to concoct it into salt, than Rochel, or any parts of Europe. Yet notwithstanding these advantages which prefer Virginia before Rochel, the French king raises a large proportion of his revenues out of that staple yearly, with which he supplies a great part of Christendom.