Proposed by Virginia Lieutenant Governor Sir William Gooch, the law was far-reaching in impact in part because it gave warehouses the power to destroy substandard crops and issue bills of exchange that served as currency.
[4] The book Tobacco in Colonial Virginia ("The Sovereign Remedy") by Melvin Herndon[5] describes operation of the public warehouses as follows: In 1730 the most comprehensive inspection bill ever introduced, passed the General Assembly.
The common knowledge that the past and present inspection laws had failed to prevent the importation of unmarketable tobacco, plus a long depression, had changed the attitude of many of the influential planters and merchants.
Soon after the passage of this new inspection law a prominent planter wrote complainingly to a London merchant, "This Tobo hath passed the Inspection of our new law, every hogshead was cased and viewed by which means the tobacco was very much tumbled and made something less sightly than it was before and it causes a great deal of extraordinary trouble".
The inspectors were required to open the hogshead, extract and carefully examine two samplings; all trash and unsound tobacco was to be burned in the warehouse kiln in the presence and with the consent of the owner.