Page images
PDF
EPUB

ed their stock in fruitless experiments, were re duced to indigence; so that emigrants from Britain, foreigners and disbanded soldiers, were all upon a level, and the prospect before them promised little else than that of living poor, dying beggars, and leaving poverty as an inheritance to their children: nor was the trade of the province more promising than its agriculture. For merly the inhabitants about Savannah had transmitted to the trustees a representation of their grievances, but had obtained nothing which amounted to relief: but now chagrined with disappointments, and dispirited by the inhospitality of the climate, they viewed the designs of the trustees in no other light, than that of having de coyed them into misery. If they had been favored with credit, and had proved successful, which was far from being the case, as the tenure of their freehold was restricted to male heirs, the oldest son only could reap the benefit of their toil, and the rest left in a state of dependence on his bounty, or be left wholly to the charge of that Being, who feeds the fowls of the air. They considered their younger children equally enti tled to paternal regard, and could not brook the idea of their holding lands under such tenure, as excluded them from the rights and privileges of other colonists. They saw numbers daily leav ing the province, under the pressure of absolute necessity, and frankly represented to the trustees that nothing could prevent it from being totally

deserted, but the same encouragements as their more fortunate neighbors in Carolina. That the trustees might have a correct view of their situation, they reiterated their complaints, and renewed their supplications for redress: they stated, that the British constitution, abounding with zealous provisions for the rights and lib. erties of mankind, would not permit subjects, who had voluntarily risked their lives, and spent their substance on the public faith, to effect a settlement in the most dangerous frontiers of the British empire, to be deprived of the common privileges of colonists: they complained that the land-holders in Georgia were prohibited from selling or leasing their possessions; that a tract containing fifty acres of the best land, was too small an allowance for the maintenance of a family, and much more so, when they were refused a freedom to choose it; that a much higher quit-rent was exacted from them than was paid for the best lands in other parts of North America; that the importation of negroes was prohibited, and white people were utterly unequal to the labors requisite to the cultivation of the swamp or low lands; that the public money granted by parliament for the relief of the settlement and the improvement of the province, was misapplied, and therefore the purposes for which it was gran ted, were by no means answered. That these inconveniences and hardships, kept them in a state of poverty and misery; and that the chief

causes of their calamities, were the strict adherence of the trustees to their chimerical and impracticable schemes of settlement; by which the people were refused the obvious means of subsistence, and cut off from every possible prospect of success. The trustees ought to have followed the example of the proprietors of SouthCarolina, and enlarged their plan with respect to liberty and property: they could have encouraged emigration by such indulgences, and animated the inhabitants to diligence and perseverance. The plan of settlement ought to have been lated by the nature of the climate, country, soil, the circumstances of the settlers, the result of experience, and not by wild speculations.

regu.

CHAPTER V.

MAJOR WM. HORTON, of Gen. Oglethorpe's regiment at Frederica, was vested with the command of all the troops in the colony, in case of attack from an enemy. He interfered but little with the civil matters of the province, except when his assistance was required to enforce the measures of the president and council, and on

these occasions acted with calmness and humanity; by which means he acquired the esteem and friendship of all the better kind of people in the province. Bailiffs or justices of the peace, were appointed in the different parts of the province, but vested with very limited powers.

On the 22d of March, 1744, the bomb magazine was blown up at Frederica. Very little damage was done, though it contained three thousand bombs. Whether fire was communicated by design or accident, is not known; if the shells had not been well bedded, the damage must have been very considerable. By some it was attributed to an Irishman, who arrived there a few days before, and disappeared immediately after the accident happened.

The affairs of the province passed on without any important occurrences for several years: the repeated complaints of the people were almost exclusively the subjects of colonial discussion. The tracts of land which had been planted with vines and mulberry-trees, scarcely retained the vestiges of cultivation The trustees made another effort to encourage the manufacture of silk, by offers of bounty; a filature, or silk house was built, and the necessary articles for preparing the cocoons and winding the silk, were directed to be furnished.

Agriculture had not flourished, and commerce had scarcely been thought of: the firm of Harris and Habersham was established, and commenced

something like a foreign trade, and in the year 1747, imported some foreign articles and estab lished a mercantile correspondence in London and the West-Indies; and in the next year shipped off several articles, such as deer-skins, lumber, cattle, hogs, poultry, &c. On these articles they made considerable profit for themselves, and greatly encouraged the planters by the purchase of every article they could dispose of, which was saleable abroad.

As agriculture and commerce go hand in hand, petitions were drawn up and presented to the trustees, soliciting their patronage to the lat ter, by an offer of bounties for the products of Georgia, but the trustees seem to have fixed their hearts exclusively upon wine and silk; and these subjects were so much canvassed, that the very sound of those two words became hateful to the people.

Schedules were drawn up by those who pos sessed mercantile talents, and laid before the trus tees, exhibiting the advantages that would result to the mother country as well as to the colonists, by the allowance of bounties to be appropriated in this way, instead of expending such large sums in fruitless efforts, for the encouragement of a staple, which the experience of fourteen years might have convinced them would not be productive; and that the ruin of the colony must be the result of their plans: but the trustees were inflexible.

« PreviousContinue »