CHAP. VII. (continued 2)

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.