by Edmund Burke
Edenton was formerly the capital of North Carolina, if a trifling village can deserve that denomination; but the present governor Mr. Dobbs has projected one further South upon the river Neus; which, though it has the advantage of being something more central, is by no means equally well situated for trade, which ought always to be of the first consideration in whatever regards any of the colonies. However, none of their towns are worth mentioning; the conveniency of inland navigation in all our Southern colonies, and the want of handicraftsmen, is a great and almost insuperable obstacle to their ever having any considerable.
CHAP. XXIV.
THE only town in either of the Carolinas which can draw our attention is Charles-town; and this is one of the first in North America for size, beauty, and traffic. It’s situation I have already mentioned, so admirably chosen at the confluence of two navigable rivers. It’s harbour is good in every respect, but that of a bar, which hinders vessels of more than two hundred tons burthen from entering. The town is regularly and pretty strongly fortified, both by nature and art; the streets are well cut; the houses are large and well built, and rent extremely high. The church is spacious, and executed in a very handsome taste, exceeding every thing of that kind which we have in America. Here besides the several denominations of dissenters have their meeting houses. It contains about eight hundred houses, and is the seat of the governor, and the place of meeting of the assembly. Several handsome equipages are kept here. The planters and merchants are rich, and well bred; the people are shewy and expensive in their dress and way of living; so that every thing conspires to make this by much the liveliest and politest place, as it is one of the richest too in all America.
The best harbour in this province is far to the Southward, on the borders of Georgia, called Port Royal. This might give a capacious and safe reception to the largest fleets of the greatest bulk and burthen; yet the town, which is called Beaufort, built upon an island of the same name with the harbour, is not as yet considerable, but it bids fair in time for becoming the first trading town in this part of America.
The import trade of South Carolina from Great-Britain and the West-Indies, is the same in all respects with that of the rest of the colonies, and it is very large. Their trade with the Indians is likewise in a very flourishing condition. As for it’s export, both the nature of that, and it’s prodigious increase, may be discerned from the following comparative tables, which let us see how much this colony has really advanced in a few years; as an attentive consideration of it’s natural advantages must shew us how much it must advance, if properly managed, as there is scarce any improvement of which this excellent country is not capable.
Exported from Charles-town.
In the year 1731.
o Rice, 41,957 barrels
o Indigo, 00,000 pounds
o Deer skins, 300 hds.
o Pitch, 10,750 barrels
o Tar, 2063 ditto
o Turpent. 759 ditto
o Beef, pork, &c. not particularized.
In the year 1754.
o Rice, 104,682 barrels
o Indigo, 216,924 pds.
o Deer skins, 460 hogsheads.
114 bund.
508 loose
o Pitch, 5,869 barrels
o Tar, 2,943 ditto
o Turpentine, 759 ditto
o Beef, 416 ditto
o Pork, 1560 ditto.
o Ind. corn, 16428 bush.
o Peas, 9,162 ditto
o Taned lea. 4,196 hides
o Hides in the hair 1,200
o Shing. 1,114,000
o Staves, 206,000
o Lumb. 395,000 feet
Besides a great deal of live cattle, horses, cedar, cypress, and walnut plank; bees wax, myrtle, and some raw silk and cotton.
North Carolina, which is reputed one of the least flourishing of our settlements, and which certainly lay under great difficulties, yet is within a few years greatly improved. The consequence of this inferior province may appear by the following view of it’s trade, which I can take upon me to say is not very far from being exact; it is at least sufficiently so to enable us to form a proper idea of this province, and it’s commerce.
Exported from all the ports of North-Carolina in 1753.
Tar, 61,528 barrels.
Pitch, 12,055 ditto.
Turpetine, 10,429 ditto.
Staves, 762,330 no.
Shingles, 2,500,000 no.
Lumber, 2,000,647 feet.
Corn, 61,580 bushels.
Peas, about 10,000 ditto.
Pork & beef, 3,300 barrels.
Tobacco, abt. 100 hogsheads.
Tanned lea. about 1000 hundred weight.
Deerskins in all ways, about 30,000.
Besides a very considerable quantity of wheat, rice, bread, potatoes, bees wax, tallow, candles, bacon, hog’s lard, some cotton, and a vast deal of squared timber of walnut and cedar, and hoops and heading of all sorts. Of late they raise indigo, but in what quantity I cannot determine, for it is all exported from South Carolina. They raise likewise much more tobacco than I have mentioned, but this, as it is produced on the frontiers of Virginia, so it is exported from thence. They export too no inconsiderable quantity of beaver, racoon, otter, fox, minx, and wild cats skins, and in every ship a good deal of live cattle, besides what they vend in Virginia. Both in North and South Carolina they have made frequent, but I think not vigorous nor sufficiently continued efforts in the cultivation of cotton and silk. What they have sent home of these commodities is of so excellent a kind, as to give us great encouragement to proceed in a business which we have not taken to heart with all that warmth that it’s importance in trade, and the fitness of the climate for these most valuable articles certainly deserves. It was a long time before this province went into the profitable trade of indigo, notwithstanding a premium subsisted a good many years for all that should be raised in our plantations; the thing was at first despaired of, and it was never judged that Carolina could produce this drug; but no sooner had a few shewn a spirited and successful example, than all went into it so heartily, that though it is but about six years since they began, I am informed that five hundred thousand weight was made last year; and as they go on, in a very little time they will supply the market with a commodity, which before we purchased every ounce from the French and Spaniards. Silk requires still more trouble, and a closer attention; as yet it proceeds with languor, nor will a premium alone ever suffice to set on foot in a vigorous manner a manufacture, which will find great difficulties in any country, which does not abound in hands that can work for very trifling wages. The want of this advantage in Carolina, though no part of the world is fitter for this business, and no business could be so advantageous to England, will for a very long time be an impediment to the manufacture of raw silk, unless some proper, well studied, and vigorously executed scheme be set on foot for that purpose; and surely it is a matter worthy of a very serious consideration. America is our great resource; this will remain to us when other branches of our trade are decayed, or exist no more; and therefore we ought to grudge no expence that may enable them to answer this end so effectually, as one day to supply the many losses we have already had, and the many more we have but too much reason to apprehend in our commerce. These expences are not like the expences of war, heavy in their nature, and precarious in their effects; but when judiciously ordered, the certain and infallible means of rich and successive harvests of gain to the latest posterity, at the momentary charge of a comparatively small quantity of seed, and of a moderate husbandry to the present generation.
CHAP. XXV. GEORGIA.
IN the year 1732, the government observing that a great tract of land in Carolina upon the borders of the Spanish Florida lay waste and unsettled, resolved to erect it into a separate province, and to send a colony thither. This they were the rather induced to do, because it lay on the frontier of all our provinces naked and defenceless; whereas if it could be properly settled, it would be a strong barrier to th
em all upon that side, or at least would be sufficient to protect Carolina from the incursions which the Indians, instigated by the French or Spaniards, might make upon that province. They had it likewise in their view to raise wine, oyl, and silk, and to turn the industry of this new people from the timber and provision trade, which the other colonies had gone into too largely, into channels more advantageous to the public. Laudable designs in every respect; though perhaps the means which were taken to put them in execution, were not altogether answerable.
That whole country which lies between the rivers Savannah and Alatamaha North and South, and from the Atlantic ocean on the East, to the great South-Sea upon the West, was vested in trustees; at the end of that period the property in chief was to revert to the crown. This country extends about sixty miles from North and South near the sea, but widens in the more remote parts to above one hundred and fifty. From the sea to the Apalachian mountains it is not much short of three hundred.
In pursuance of the original design, the trustees resolved to encourage poor people to settle in the province, which had been committed to their care; and to this purpose found them in necessaries to transport them into a country, of which they had previously published a most exaggerated and flattering description. In reality the country differs little from South Carolina, but that the summers are yet hotter, and the soil in the general of a poorer kind. The colony was sent over under the care of Mr. Oglethorpe, who very generously bestowed his own time and pains, without any reward, for the advancement of the settlement.
The trustees had very well observed, that many of our colonies, especially that of South Carolina, had been very much endangered both internally and externally, by suffering the negroes to grow so much more numerous than the whites. An error of this kind, they judged, in a colony which was not only to defend itself, but to be in some sort a protection to the others, would have been inexcusable; they for that reason forbid the importation of negroes into Georgia. In the next place, they observed that great mischiefs happened in the other settlements from making vast grants of land, which the grantees jobbed out again to the discouragement of the settlers; or what was worse, suffered to lie idle and uncultivated. To avoid this mischief, and to prevent the people from becoming wealthy and luxurious, which they thought inconsistent with the military plan upon which this colony was founded, they allowed in the common course to each family but twenty-five acres; and none could, according to the original scheme, by any means come to possess more than five hundred. Neither did they give an inheritance in fee simple, or to the heirs general of the settlers, but granted them their lands inheritable only by their male issue. They likewise forbid the importation of rum into the province, to prevent the great disorders which they observed to arise in the other parts of North America, from the abuse of spirituous liquors.
These regulations, though well intended, and meant to bring about very excellent purposes, yet it might at first, as it did afterwards appear, that they were made without sufficiently consulting the nature of the country, or the disposition of the people which they regarded. For in the first place, as the climate is excessively hot, and field work very laborious in a new colony, as the ground must be cleared, tilled and sowed, all with great and incessant toil, for their bare subsistence, the load was too heavy for the white men, especially men who had not been seasoned to the country. The consequence of which was, that the greatest part of their time, all the heat of the day, was spent in idleness, which brought certain want along with it. It is true that all our colonies on the continent, even Virginia and Carolina, were originally settled without the help of negroes. The white men were obliged to the labour, and they underwent it, because they then saw no other way; but it is the nature of man, not to submit to extraordinary hardships, in one spot, when they see their neighbours on another, without any difference in the circumstances of things, in a much more easy condition. Besides, there were no methods taken to animate them under the hardships they endured. All things contributed to dispirit them.
A levelling scheme in a new colony is a thing extremely unadviseable. Men are seldom induced to leave their country, but upon some extraordinary prospects; there ought always to be something of a vastness in the view that is presented to them, to strike powerfully upon their imagination; and this will operate, because men will never reason well enough to see, that the majority of mankind are not endued with dispositions proper to make a fortune any where, let the proposed advantages be what they will. The majority of mankind must always be indigent; but in a new settlement they must be all so, unless some persons there are on such a comfortable and substantial footing, as to give direction and vigour to the industry of the rest; for in every well contrived building there must be strong beams and joists, as well as smaller bricks, tiles and laths. Persons of substance found themselves discouraged from attempting a settlement, by the narrow bounds which no industry could enable them to pass; and the design of confirming the inheritance to the male line was an additional discouragement. The settlers found themselves not upon a par with the other colonies. There was an obvious inconvenience in leaving no provision at all for females, as in a new colony the land must be, for some time at least, the only wealth of the family. The quantity of twenty-five acres was undoubtedly too small a portion, as it was given without any consideration of the quality of the land, and was therefore in many places of very little value. Add to this, that it was clogged after a short free tenure, with a much greater quit-rent than is paid in our best and longest settled colonies. Indeed through the whole manner of granting land, there appeared, I know not what low attention to the trifling profits that might be derived to the trustees or the crown by rents and escheats, which clogged the liberal scheme that was first laid down, and was in itself extremely injudicious. When you have a flourishing colony, with extensive settlements, from the smallest quit-rents the crown receives a large revenue; but in an ill-settled province, the greatest rents make but a poor return, and yet are sufficient to burthen and impoverish the people.
The tail male grants were so grievous, that the trustees themselves corrected that error in a short time. The prohibition of rum, though specious in appearance, had a very bad effect. The waters in this unsettled country running through such an extent of forest, were not wholsome drinking, and wanted the corrective of a little spirit, as the settlers themselves wanted something to support their strength in the extraordinary and unusual heat of the climate, and the dampness of it in several places disposing them to agues and fevers. But what was worse, this prohibition in a manner deprived them of the only vent they had for the only commodities they could send to market, lumber and corn, which could sell no where but in the sugar islands, and with this restriction of negroes and rum, they could take very little from them in return.
CHAP. XXVI.
ALL these, and several other inconveniencies in the plan of the settlement, raised a general discontent in the inhabitants; they quarrelled with one another, and with their magistrates; they complained; they remonstrated; and finding no satisfaction, many of them fled out of Georgia, and dispersed themselves where they deemed the encouragement better, to all the other colonies. So that of above two thousand people, who had transported themselves from Europe, in a little time not above six or seven hundred were to be found in Georgia; so far were they from increasing. The mischief grew worse and worse every day, until the government revoked the grant to the trustees, took the province into their own hands, and annulled all the particular regulations that were made. It was then left exactly on the same footing with Carolina.
Though this step has probably saved the colony from entire ruin, yet it was not perhaps so well done to neglect entirely the first views upon which it was settled. These were undoubtedly judicious; and if the methods taken to compass them were not so well directed, it was no argument against the designs themselves, but a reason for some change in the instruments designed to put them in execution. Certainly nothing wants a regulation more, than the dang
erous inequality in the number of negroes and whites in such of our provinces where the former are used. South Carolina, in spite of it’s great wealth, is really in a more defenceless condition, than a knot of poor townships on the frontiers of New England. In Georgia, the first error of absolutely prohibiting the use of negroes, might be turned to very good account; for they would have received the permission to employ them under what qualifications soever, not as a restriction, but as a favour and indulgence; and by executing whatever regulations we should make in this point with strictness, by degrees we might see a province fit to answer all the ends of defence and traffic too; whereas we have let them use such a latitude in that affair, which we were so earnest to prevent, that Georgia instead of being any defence to Carolina, does actually stand in need of a considerable force to defend itself.