Note 378 — Chapter V
Reading edition
Hume says, "that the queen had taken a dislike to the smell of this useful plant." But this reason, if it existed, would hardly have induced her to prohibit its cultivation throughout the kingdom. The real motive appears in several letters of the Lansdowne collection. By the domestic culture of woad, the customs on its importation were reduced; and this led to a project of levying a sort of excise upon it at home. Catalogue of Lansdowne MSS. xlix. 32-60. The same principle has since caused the prohibition of sowing tobacco.