In excuse for increasing provincial paper-money the planters always pled the exigencies of the public, such as warlike expeditions, raising fortifications, providing military stores, and maintaining garrisons; those no doubt rendered the measure sometimes necessary, and often reasonable, but private interest had also considerable weight in adopting it, and carrying it into execution. In the year 1737, a bill of exchange on London, for a hundred pounds sterling, sold for seven hundred and fifty pounds Carolina currency. Of this the merchants might complain, but from this period they had too little weight in the public councils to obtain any redress. The only resource left for them was to raise the price of negroes, and British articles of importation, according to the advanced price of produce, and bills of exchange. However, the exchange again fell to seven hundred per cent. at which standard it afterwards rested and remained.
[Sidenote] Small progress of Georgia.
By this time the poor colonists of Georgia, after trial, had become fully convinced of the impropriety and folly of the plan of settlement framed by the Trustees, which, however well intended, was ill adapted to their circumstances, and ruinous to the settlement. In the province of Carolina, which lay adjacent, the colonists discovered that there they could obtain lands not only on better terms, but also liberty to purchase negroes to assist in clearing and cultivating them. They found labour in the burning climate intolerable, and the dangers and hardships to which they were subjected unsurmountable. Instead of raising commodities for exportation, the Georgians, by the labour of several years, were not yet able to raise provisions sufficient to support themselves and families. Under each discouragements, numbers retired to the Carolina side of the river, where they had better prospects of success, and the magistrates observed the infant colony sinking into ruin, and likely to be totally deserted. The freeholders in and round Savanna assembled together, and drew up a state of their deplorable circumstances, and transmitted it to the Trustees, in which they represented their success in Georgia as a thing absolutely impossible, without the enjoyment of the same liberties and privileges with their neighbours in Carolina. In two respects they implored relief from the Trustees; they desired a fee-simple or free title to their lands, and liberty to import negroes under certain limitations, without which they declared they had neither encouragement to labour, nor ability to provide for their posterity. But the colony of Highlanders, instead of joining in this application, to a man remonstrated against the introduction of slaves. As they lay contiguous to the Spanish dominions, they were apprehensive that these enemies would entice their slaves from them in time of peace, and in time of war instigate them to rise against their masters. Besides, they considered perpetual slavery as shocking to human nature, and deemed the permission of it as a grievance, and which in some future day might also prove a scourge, and make many feel the smart of that oppression they so earnestly desired to introduce. For as the Spaniards had proclaimed freedom to them, they alledged that slaves would run away, and ruin poor planters; and at all events would disqualify them the more for defending the province against external enemies, while their families were exposed to barbarous domestics, provoked perhaps by harsh usage, or grown desperate through misery and oppression.
[Sidenote] Hardships of the first settlers.
Few persons who are acquainted with the country will wonder at the complaints of the poor settlers in Georgia; for if we consider the climate to which they were sent, and the labours and hardships they had to undergo, we may rather be astonished that any of them survived the first year after their arrival. When James Oglethorpe took possession of this wilderness, the whole was an immense thick forest, excepting savannas, which are natural plains where no trees grow, and a few Indian fields, where the savages planted maize for their subsistence. In the province there were the same wild animals, fishes, reptiles and insects, which were found in Carolina. The country in the maritime parts was likewise a spacious plain, covered with pine trees, where the lands were barren and sandy; and with narrow slips of oaks, hickory, cypress, cane, &c. where the lands were of a better quality. Rains, thunder-storms, hurricanes, and whirlwinds, were equally frequent in the one province as in the other. Little difference could be perceived in the soil, which in both was barren or swampy; and the same diseases were common to both. The lands being covered with wood, through which the sea-breezes could not penetrate, there was little agitation in the air, which at some seasons was thick, heavy and foggy, and at others clear, close, and suffocating, both which are very pernicious to health. The air of the swampy land was pregnant with innumerable noxious qualities, insomuch that a more unwholesome climate was not perhaps to be found in the universe. The poor settlers considered this howling wilderness to which they were brought, to have been designed by nature rather for the habitation of wild beasts than human creatures. They found that diseases, or even misfortunes were in effect equally fatal: for though neither of them might prove mortal, yet either would disable them from living, and reduce them to a state in which they might more properly be said to perish than to die.
Nothing has retarded the progress and improvement of these southern settlements more than the inattention shewn to the natural productions of the soil, and the preference which has commonly been given to articles transplanted from Europe. Over the whole world different articles of produce are suited to different soils and climates. As Georgia lay so convenient for supplying the West Indies with maize, Indian pease, and potatoes, for which the demand was very great, perhaps the first planters could scarcely have turned their attention to more profitable articles, but without strength of hands little advantage could be reaped from them. It is true the West-India Islands would produce such articles, yet the planters would never cultivate them, while they could obtain them by purchase: the lands there suited other productions more valuable and advantageous. Abundance of stock, particularly hogs and black cattle, might have been raised in Georgia for the same market. Lumber was also in demand, and might have been rendered profitable to the province, but nothing could succeed there under the foolish restrictions of the Trustees. European grain, such as wheat, oats, barley, and rye, thrived very ill on the maritime parts; and even silk and wine were found upon trial by no means to answer their expectations. The bounties given for raising the latter were an encouragement to the settlers, but either no pains were taken to instruct the people in the proper methods of raising them, or the soil and climate were ill adapted for the purpose. The poor and ignorant planters applied themselves to those articles of husbandry to which probably they had been formerly accustomed, but which poorly rewarded them and left them, after all their toil, in a starved and miserable condition.
The complaints of the Georgians, however ignorant they might be, ought not to have been entirely disregarded by the Trustees. Experience suggested those inconveniencies and troubles from which they implored relief. The hints they gave certainly ought to have been improved towards correcting errors in the first plan of settlement, and framing another more favourable and advantageous. Such scattered thoughts of individuals sometimes afford wise men materials for forming just judgments, and improving towards the establishment of the best and most beneficial regulations. The people governed ought never to be excluded from the attention and regard of their Governors. The honour of the Trustees depended on the success and happiness of the settlers, and it was impossible for the people to succeed and be happy without those encouragements, liberties and privileges absolutely necessary to the first state of colonization. A free title to their land, liberty to chuse it, and then to manage it in such a manner as appeared to themselves most conducive to their interest, were the principal incentives to industry; and industry, well directed, is the grand source of opulence to every country.
It must be acknowledged, for the credit of the benevolent Trustees, that they sent out these emigrants to Georgia under several very favourable circumstances. They paid the expences of their passage, and furnished them with clothes, arms, ammunition, and instruments of husbandry. They gave them lands, and bought for some of them cows and hogs to begin their flock. They maintained their family during the first year of their occupancy, or until they should receive some return from their lands. So that if the planters were exposed to hazards from the climate, and obliged to undergo labour, they certainly entered on their task with several advantages. The taxes demanded, comparatively speaking, were a mere trifle. For their encouragement they wrought entirely for themselves, and for some time were favoured with a free and generous maintenance.
[Sidenote] An Irish colony planted.
By this time an account of the great privileges and indulgences granted by the crown for the encouragement of emigration to Carolina, had been published through Britain and Ireland, and many industrious people in different parts had resolved to take the benefit of his Majesty's bounty. Multitudes of labourers and husbandmen in Ireland, oppressed by landlords and bishops, and unable by their utmost diligence to procure a comfortable subsistence for their families, embarked for Carolina. The first colony of Irish people had lands granted them near Santee river, and formed the settlement called Williamsburgh township. But notwithstanding the bounty of the crown, these poor emigrants remained for several years in low and miserable circumstances. The rigours of the climate, joined to the want of precaution, so common to strangers, proved fatal to numbers of them. Having but scanty provisions in the first age of cultivation, vast numbers, by their heavy labour, being both debilitated in body and dejected in spirit, sickened and died in the woods. But as this township received frequent supplies from the same quarter, the Irish settlement, amidst every hardship, increased in number; and at length they applied to the merchants for negroes, who entrusted them with a few, by which means they were relieved from the severest part of the labour, then, by their great diligence and industry, spots of land were gradually cleared, which in the first place yielded them provisions, and in process of time became moderate and fruitful estates.