the Board of Trade discouraged him from doing anything to develop the manufacture of iron in Virginia. So, in Pennsylvania, the production of iron was checked by the Act of 1750 which prohibited its manufacture except in the early stages. Spotswood was, however, able to set some immigrant Palatines to work at mining for iron ore at Germanna. He himself secured a tract of 45,000 acres subsequently known as Spotsylvania County (1720), to which he afterwards retired. He was presently succeeded by another Scotsman of equal energy and ability, Robert Dinwiddie. He determined to uphold the British claims westwards between the mountains and the Mississippi, where fur traders, passing over the Alleghanies by Will's Creek or working down from Pennsylvania, had established their influence. In 1749 two Virginian land companies received large grants of lands for settlement in the Ohio Valley. In the same year the Governor of Canada sent thither a force under Céleron de Bienville to assert the French claim to it. Four years later the new French governor, Duquesne, who had been instructed to build forts on the Ohio, despatched 1000 men into that country. At Venango they seized an English trading house and converted it into Fort Machault. Dinwiddie thereupon sent George Washington, a young Virginian surveyor, to demand their withdrawal, and began to build a fort on the forks of the Ohio. This work was interrupted by the French, who compelled the British to retire, and constructed Fort Duquesne on the same spot. Dinwiddie had no efficient military force at his disposal, but he raised a few hundred men and despatched them under the command of Colonel Fry and Washington. At Great Meadows on the western slope of the Alleghanies, Washington came into collision with the French, and was presently forced to surrender (July 1754). The first blows had been struck in the struggle which was to end in the expulsion of the French from the eastern half of North America. The difference between the two Carolinas was strongly marked. A certain amount of tobacco was grown in North Carolina, but the main industry was the production of naval stores, encouraged by the bounties offered by the British Government. Tar, pitch, and turpentine were extracted from the pine trees in the sandy soil. In South Carolina after 1700 the chief product was rice. Both provinces traded with the Indians for furs and skins. But the difference between their staple industries resulted in a divergence of social and economic conditions. The growing of rice in the paddy fields of a tropical climate involved the increasing use of black labour in the southern province, the development of large estates, and the congregation of rich merchants and landowners about the growing port and capital, Charleston. North Carolina, on the other hand, had no towns at all. Bath, the largest village, consisted of only a dozen houses. In South 1 Spotswood, Letters, 11, 70, 196 seqq. 2 Céleron's Journal, printed, Catholic Historical Researches, 11, 61-117. CAROLINA AND GEORGIA 395 Carolina the population in 1719 amounted to 9000 whites and 12,000 negroes.1 By 1763 there were 70,000 blacks to 30,000 whites.2 In North Carolina, where the industries were more suited to white labour, the proportions were reversed. The whites increased from 32,000 in 1732 to 77,000 in 1760, and the blacks from 6000 to only 16,000.3 The scattered planters, lumbermen, and Indian traders of North Carolina formed a rough and turbulent community. Even after the Crown had bought out seven-eighths of the proprietors, internal feuds, reflected in the Assembly, persisted and rendered the task of the royal governors no light one. An attempt to regulate the collection of quit-rents by Governor Johnston called forth a remonstrance from the Assembly, appealing to the terms of the "Grand Deed" of 1668. It was backed by 500 planters in arms, and thereafter the amount of quit-rents collected was almost negligible." The successful issue of the Yamassee war prepared the way for the settlement of central South Carolina and the territory soon to be known as Georgia. The presence of the Spaniards in Florida had led Governor Nicholson to establish a post and garrison on the Altamaha River. It was soon abandoned, for the site was unhealthy and the establishment expensive. But the threat of St Augustine and the danger of Indians incited by Spaniards to attack the frontier plantations remained. In these circumstances James Edward Oglethorpe had no difficulty in obtaining a charter to establish a buffer colony between the Savannah and Altamaha Rivers. Lands were granted in 1732 to a Corporation of "Trustees for the Colony of Georgia”, with full powers of administration for twenty-six years, after which control was to revert to the Crown. As a member of the House of Commons, Oglethorpe had interested himself in the hapless fate of poor debtors confined in the wretched prisons of the period. He proposed to give such debtors a new start in life. He was assisted in his project by Thomas Coram and other philanthropists. Coram had had early associations with New England as a shipbuilder, and had previously taken part in similar schemes for settling disbanded officers and soldiers on undeveloped lands there or in Nova Scotia. The principle of his proposals was to relieve the surplus population by emigrants who should strengthen the frontiers against the enemy and produce naval stores. Thus the Elizabethan conception of colonisation reappears in the new venture in Georgia. In February 1733 Oglethorpe arrived in the Savannah River with 114 emigrants and there founded a settlement on a well-chosen site, which was named Savannah. Four years later, another settlement, 1 Hist. MSS Comm. Rep. xi, iv, p. 254: 2 Carroll's Historical Collections, 11, 478. N.C. Col. Recs. IV. pp. xvii, 424, viii, 161; Bassett, J. S., Slavery in North Carolina. Wright, R., Life of Oglethorpe; Jones, Charles, Georgia; Candler, A. D., Records of Georgia; S.C. Col. Recs. IV; Roberts, R. A., Trans. of R. Hist. Soc. 1vth ser. vol. vi, pp. 73–93. • Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1712–14, no. 460, i, etc.; C.O. 217, 2, no. 24. Frederica, was made on the Altamaha River, seventy miles south of Savannah, whilst a hundred miles north of it a post for the Indian fur trade was established at Augusta. A little to the north of Frederica, some Highlanders settled at New Inverness. Oglethorpe acted as judge and lawgiver of his new colony, but the settlers soon began to resent the paternal nature of his government. They were not allowed to own slaves; the use of ardent liquors was forbidden; and grants of land were restricted to fifty acres per freeholder.1 These well-meant regulations proved economically disastrous. For the smallholders of Georgia, without slave labour, could not compete with their neighbours in South Carolina, whose large estates were worked by negroes. They were, moreover, in perpetual conflict with the Spaniards, sometimes being attacked, sometimes making expeditions against St Augustine. Oglethorpe returned home in 1743, wearied by these struggles, and the trustees resigned their charter in 1752. Under the administration of the Crown, Georgia received the normal colonial constitution. The debtor settlers made good in their frontier province. But their numbers increased slowly. In spite of a reinforcement of Protestant refugees from Salzburg, they only numbered in 1760 some 5000 whites with 2000 blacks. The climatic conditions had caused them to disregard the founder's instructions both as to slaves and alcoholic liquors. Reaching from Hudson Bay to Georgia, the British settlements varied in climate from sub-arctic to sub-tropical. Such variety resulted in divergence of products, of population, and of social conditions. Their steady expansion was due to two causes, increase of population and cultivation of the land. British immigrants did not, like the Spaniards, seek primarily for gold and silver, but devoted themselves to agriculture and trade. The southern colonies fed themselves. The middle colonies grew wheat and corn and exported flour and meal to the West Indies, whilst New England sent thither potatoes, vegetables, cattle, horses, and fish, and sawn timber, in return for sugar and molasses. These were needed for the great rum distilleries which had sprung up in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Medford, N.J., and Newport, R.I. Rum was consumed by the colonists themselves, and used in the Indian fur trade and the African slave trade. The duties laid by the Molasses Act of 1733 on the cheaper sugar and molasses imported from the French sugar islands were largely evaded by smuggling. No great effort was made to prevent it. For the British West Indian sugar planters had no sooner obtained the passing of that Act than they discovered that the solution of their troubles was permission to export their produce direct to Europe, and this permission they obtained. All the northern colonies exported furs and skins, the product of trade with the Indians, 1 State of Province of Georgia, 1740; True and Historical Narrative of the Colony of Georgia, etc. (1741), Am. Col. Tracts (Rochester, 1897). SHIPBUILDING AND CURRENCY 397 and naval stores to a greater or less extent. But prolonged attempts to preserve trees in the king's woods fit for masts for the Royal Navy were opposed by the New Englanders, who could not be restrained by Acts of Parliament from cutting them for their saw-mills and lumber trade. The northern colonists were to a large extent also a sea-going people. Massachusetts alone was building 150 vessels annually by 1729, and could boast a fleet of 190 sail.1 Indeed the shipbuilding activity at Boston, Rhode Island, and New York was beginning to cause anxiety in the English yards. These Plantationbuilt vessels were employed in the carrying trade to the West Indies, England, Spain, and Portugal, but mainly in the coast-wise trade and fishery. All along the coast from Boston to Canso the New England fishermen plied their calling. They took their share in the Newfoundland fishery as well, where they caused much complaint by debauching the English fishermen with rum, and carrying them off as indentured servants to the mainland. In return for their exports of raw material the American colonies imported British manufactures. These were retailed at a profit of from 100 to 300 per cent. All who could afford it wore good English cloth, and only those who could not wore homespun.❜ Fostered by the Acts of Trade and the policy of the British Government, which discouraged all manufacturing industries in the Plantations, the balance of trade was permanently in favour of the mother country. It grew from about £50,000 a year at the beginning of this period to nearly £2,000,000 in 1760.4 This adverse balance, which had to be liquidated by the colonies in gold or silver, was made good by trade with the British West Indies, by freight money earned by shipping, and by illicit trade with the French, Spanish, and Danish West Indies and the French and Spaniards on the continent. But the colonies were drained of specie, whilst the growth of the population, the expansion of trade, the expenses of the intercolonial wars, and the inconvenience of barter all created a demand for an increase of currency. British coins were almost unknown in the Plantations. Spanish pieces of eight (reals) formed the metallic basis of the colonial monetary system. But their value, though fixed by Act of Parliament, was a fluctuating one. For a long time all payments in Virginia were made in tobacco, in the West Indies in sugar. Wheat certificates were used in Pennsylvania, and there the property tax was made payable in money or flour. In North Carolina seventeen commodities were declared legal tender, and so remained throughout this period. The need for an increased currency was met by paper money. The issue of paper bills of credit was begun by Massachusetts as early as 1690, to defray the expenses of the Quebec expedition. The 2 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1715; 1716, no. 70, i, etc. 1 C.O. 5, 752, no. 45. Ibid. 1714-15, no. 673, etc. Macpherson, D., Annals of Commerce, III, 340; Mitchell, Dr John, The State of the Colonies, p. 280; cf. C.O. 5, 1093, f. 178. subsequent war with the French and the cost of defending the frontier against the Canadian Indians, amounting to £30,000 a year, led to further issues. By 1715 they totalled £474,000. These bills were issued by the Government. But in 1701 a plan was put forward for establishing a Land Bank, to issue paper money on security of land. This scheme was revived in 1714. It was supported by a large body of debtors and others impoverished by the war, who looked to an inflation of the currency as the cure for their financial and commercial troubles. It was opposed by those who favoured restricted government issues with suitable sinking funds. The question long remained a burning one in Massachusetts's politics. As the issues increased, the value of paper money declined. By 1729 it was barely a quarter of that of sterling.1 At length, the £175,000 sterling voted by Parliament to New England in compensation for the return of Louisbourg was well and wisely applied to the reduction of its paper at the rate of 7 to 1. In 1751 Parliament forbade further paper issues in New England except for certain stated objects. Wars with the Spaniards and Indians were likewise the occasion of paper issues in South Carolina. The first was made in 1702 and others followed rapidly, secured on land and crops. Depreciation was soon acute. Bank bills were rated by an Act of 1722 at 4 to 1 in silver. In Pennsylvania the deficiency of coins, caused by contraction of trade with the West Indies after the war, was made good by an issue of bills for £50,000 in 1723, which was followed by others for small amounts. A limited paper currency of this kind proved wholly beneficial. The danger lay in excess. The wise policy of the Council of Trade was to restrain the amount of the issues, to secure the provision of adequate funds to sink the bills, and to see that such provisions were not altered by appropriations and diversions by subsequent Assemblies, as in the case of Carolina and New Jersey. To this end, governors were forbidden to assent to bills for further issues without a clause suspending their operation until they had received the assent of the Crown.3 The need for such wholesome restraint was proved by Rhode Island, where no such control could be exercised. There the paper currency became a veritable political scandal. Bills for half a million were issued to private individuals in proportion to their political influence. By the end of this period the resulting depreciation was so great that the exchange stood at 32 to 1.4 Where depreciation became too great, reversion to barter ensued. One of the difficulties with which the struggling post office in Virginia had to contend was that there were no small coins, and the postage was smaller than the smallest bill.5 1 C.O. 5, 898, no. 64; cf. Hutchinson, Thomas, Hist. of Mass.; Davis, Andrew, Currency and Banking in Mass. Bay. 2 Pa. Votes, II, 483; II, 32; Franklin, B., Works, 11, 254. Rider, Sidney, Rhode I. Hist. Tracts, 1st ser. vIII. Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1710, no. 437. 3 A.P.C., Col. шI (1720). |