Chapter 5

I have several times made remarks on the paper-currency of the province, which the planters were always for increasing, and the merchants and money lenders for sinking. The exchange of London, like a commercial thermometer, served to measure the rise or fall of paper-credit in Carolina; and the price of bills of exchange commonly ascertained the value of their current money. The permanent riches of the country consisted in lands, houses, and negroes; and the produce of the lands, improved by negroes, raw materials, provisions, and naval stores, were exchanged for what the province wanted from other countries. The attention of the mercantile part was chiefly employed about staple commodities; and as their great object was present profit it was natural for them to be governed by that great axiom in trade, whoever brings commodities cheapest and in the best order to market, must always meet with the greatest encouragement and success. The planters, on the other hand, attended to the balance of trade, which was turned in their favour, and concluded, that when the exports of any province exceeded its imports, whatever losses private persons might now and then sustain, yet that province upon the whole was growing rich. Let us suppose, what was indeed far from being the case, that Georgia so far advanced in improvement as to rival Carolina in raw materials, and exchangeable commodities, and to undersell her at the markets in Europe: This advantage could only arise from the superior quality of her lands, the cheapness of her labour, or her landed men being contented with smaller profits. In such a case it was the business of the Carolina merchants to lower the price of her commodities, in order to reap the same advantages with her neighbours; and this could only be done by reducing the quantity of paper-money in circulation. If gold and silver only past current in Georgia, which by general consent was the medium of commerce throughout the world, if she had a sufficient quantity of them to answer the purposes of trade, and no paper-currency had been permitted to pass current; in such case her commodities would bring their full value at the provincial market, and no more, according to the general standard of money in Europe. Supposing also that Carolina had a quantity of gold and silver in circulation, sufficient for the purposes of commerce, and that the planters, in order to raise the value of their produce, should issue paper-money equal to the quantity of gold and silver in circulation, the consequence would be, the price of labour, and of all articles of exportation would be doubled. But as the markets of Europe remained the same, and her commodities being of the same kind and quality with those of Georgia, they would not bring an higher price. Some persons must be losers, and in the fist instance this loss must fall on the mercantile interest, and moneyed men. Therefore this superabundance of paper-credit, on whose foundation the deluded province built its visionary fabric of great wealth, was not only useless, but prejudicial with respect to the community. Paper-money in such large quantities is the bane of commerce, a kind of fictitious wealth, making men by high founding language imagine they are worth thousands and millions, while a ship's load of it would not procure for the country a regiment of auxiliary troops in time of war, nor a suit of clothes at an European market in time of peace. Had America, from its first settlement, prohibited paper-money altogether, her staple commodities must have brought her, in the course of commerce, vast sums of gold and silver, which would have circulated through the continent, and answered all the purposes of trade both foreign and domestic. It is true the value of gold and silver is equally nominal, and rises and falls like the value of other articles of commerce, in proportion to the quantity in circulation. But as nations in general have fixed on these metals as the medium of trade, this has served to stamp a value on them, and render them the means not only of procuring every where the necessaries of life, but by supporting public credit, the chief means also of national protection.

However, some distinction in point of policy should perhaps be made between a colony in its infancy, and a nation already possessed of wealth, and in an advanced state of agriculture and commerce, especially while the former is united to, and under the protection of the latter. To a growing colony, such as Carolina, paper-credit, under certain limitations, was useful in several respects; especially as the gold and silver always left the country, when it answered the purpose of the merchant for remittance better than produce. This credit served to procure the planter strength of hands to clear and cultivate his fields, from which the real wealth of the province arose. But in an improved country such as England, supported by labourers, manufacturers and trade, large emissions of paper-money lessen the value of gold and silver, and both cause them to leave the country, and its produce and manufactures to come dearer to market. Adventurous planters in Carolina, eager to obtain a number of negroes, always stretched their credit with the traders to its utmost pitch; for as negroes on good lands cleared themselves in a few years, they by this means made an annual addition to their capital stock. After obtaining this credit, it then became their interest to maintain their superiority in assembly, and discharge their debt to the merchants in the easiest manner they could. The increase of paper-money always proved to them a considerable assistance, as it advanced the price of those commodities they brought to the market, by which they cancelled their debts with the merchants; so that however much this currency might depreciate, the loss occasioned by it from time to time fell not on the adventurous planters, but on the merchants and money-lenders, who were obliged to take it in payment of debts, or produce, which always arose in price in proportion to its depreciation.

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.

CHAP. VIII.

[Sidenote] Trade obstructed by the Spaniards of Mexico.

For several years before an open rupture took place between Great Britain and Spain, no good understanding subsisted between those two different courts, neither with respect to the privileges of navigation on the Mexican seas, nor to the limits between the provinces of Georgia and Florida. On one hand, the Spaniards pretended that they had an exclusive right to some latitudes in the bay of Mexico; and, on the other, though the matter had never been clearly ascertained by treaty, the British merchants claimed the privilege of cutting logwood on the bay of Campeachy. This liberty indeed had been tolerated on the part of Spain for several years, and the British merchants, from avaricious motives, had begun a traffic with the Spaniards, and supplied them with goods of English manufacture. To prevent this illicit trade, the Spaniards doubled the number of ships stationed in Mexico for guarding the coast, giving them orders to board and search every English vessel found in those seas, to seize on all that carried contraband commodities, and confine the sailors. At length not only smugglers, but fair traders were searched and detained, so that all commerce in those seas was entirely obstructed. The British merchants again and again complained to the ministry of depredations committed, and damages sustained; which indeed produced one remonstrance after another to the Spanish court; all which were answered only by evasive promises and delays. The Spaniards flattered the British minister, by telling him, they would enquire into the occasion of such grievances, and settle all differences by way of negotiation. Sir Robert Walpole, fond of pacific measures, and trusting to such proposals of accommodation, for several years suffered the grievances of the merchants to remain unredressed, and the trade of the nation to suffer great losses.

[Sidenote] William Bull Lieut.-governor.

In the year 1738, Samuel Horsley was appointed Governor of South Carolina, but he dying before he left England, the charge of the province devolved on William Bull, a man of good natural abilities, and well acquainted with the state of the province. The garrison at Augustine having received a considerable reinforcement, it therefore became the business of the people of Carolina, as well as those of Georgia, to watch the motions of their neighbours. As the Spaniards pretended a right to that province, they were pouring in troops into Augustine, which gave the British colonists some reason to apprehend they had resolved to assert their right by force of arms. William Bull despatched advice to England of the growing power of Spain in East Florida, and at the same time acquainted the Trustees, that such preparations were making there as evidently portended approaching hostilities. The British ministers were well acquainted with the state of Carolina, from a late representation transmitted by its provincial legislature. The Trustees for Georgia presented a memorial to the king, giving an account of the Spanish preparations, and the feeble and defenceless condition of Georgia, and imploring his Majesty's gracious assistance. In consequence of which, a regiment of six hundred effective men was ordered to be raised, with a view of sending them to Georgia. The King having made James Oglethorpe Major-General of all the forces of the two provinces, gave him the command of this regiment and ordered him out for the protection of the southern frontiers of the British dominions in America.

[Sidenote] Oglethorpe's regiment sent to Georgia.

About the middle of the same year, the Hector, and Blandford ships of war sailed, to convoy the transports which carried General Oglethorpe and his regiment to that province. Forty supernumeraries followed the General to supply the place of such officers or soldiers as might sicken and die by the change of the climate. Upon the arrival of this regiment, the people of Carolina and Georgia rejoiced, and testified their grateful sense of his Majesty's paternal care in the strongest terms. The Georgians, who had been for some time harassed with frequent alarms, now found themselves happily relieved, and placed in such circumstances as enabled them to bid defiance to the Spanish power. Parties of the regiment were sent to the different garrisons, and the expence the Trustees had formerly been at in maintaining them of course ceased. The General held his head-quarters at Frederica, but raised forts on some other islands lying nearer the Spaniards, particularly in Cumberland and Jekyl islands, in which he also kept garrisons to watch the motions of his enemies.

[Sidenote] The Spaniards try in vain to seduce the Creeks.

While these hostile preparations were going on, it behoved General Oglethorpe to cultivate the firmest friendship with Indian nations, that they might be ready on every emergency to assist him. During his absence the Spaniards had made several attempts to seduce the Creeks, who were much attached to Oglethorpe, by telling them he was at Augustine, and promised them great presents in case they would pay him a visit at that place. Accordingly some of their leaders went down to see the beloved man, but not finding him there, they were highly offended, and resolved immediately to return to their nation. The Spanish Governor, in order to cover the fraud, or probably with a design of conveying those leaders out of the way, that they might the more easily corrupt their nation; told them, that the General lay sick on board of a ship in the harbour, where he would be extremely glad to see them. But the savages were jealous of some bad design, and refused to go, and even rejected their presents and offers of alliance. When they returned to their nation, they found an invitation from General Oglethorpe to all the chieftains to meet him at Frederica, which plainly discovered to them the insidious designs of the Spaniards, and helped not a little to increase his power and influence among them. A number of their head warriors immediately set out to meet him at the place appointed, where the General thanked them for their fidelity, made them many valuable presents, and renewed the treaty of friendship and alliance with them. At this congress the Creeks seemed better satisfied than usual, agreed to march a thousand men to the General's assistance whenever he should demand them, and invited him up to see their towns. But as he was then busy, he excused himself, by promising to visit them next summer, and accordingly dismissed them no less pleased with his kindness, than incensed against the Spaniards for their falsehood and deceit.

[Sidenote] Matters hastening to a rupture with Spain.