by their absence they increase the people of Great Britain, for hands will not be long wanting where employment is to be had; if we can find business that will feed them, what between the encouragement and increase of propagation on the one hand, and the preservation of those who now perish for want on the other: we should quickly find we had strengthened our hive by sending a swarm away to provide for themselves. It is also highly for the honor and advancement of our holy religion to assign a new country to the poor Germans, who have left their own for the sake of truth. It will be a powerful encouragement to martyrs and confessors of this kind to hold fast their integrity, when they know their case not to be desperate in this world. Nor need we fear that the King of Prussia will be able to engross them all, we shall have a share of them if we contribute cheerfully to their removal. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts have gloriously exerted themselves on this occasion they have resolved to advance such a sum of money to the Trustees for the colony of Georgia, as will enable them to provide for seven hundred poor Salzburghers. This is laying a foundation for the conversion of the heathen, at the same time that they snatch a great number of poor Christians out of the danger of apostacy. It is to be hoped this laudable example will be followed by private persons, who may thus at once do much for the glory of God, and for the wealth and trade of Great Britain. Subjects thus acquired by the impolitic persecutions, by the superstitious barbarities of the neighboring princes, are a noble addition to the capital stock of the British Empire. If our people be ten millions, and we were to have an access of ten thousand useful refugees, every stock-jobber in Exchange-alley must allow that this would increase our wealth and figure in the world, as one added to a thousand, or, as one-tenth per cent. This would be the proportion of our growth compared with our neighbors, who have not been the persecutors; but as against the persecutor, the increase of our strength would be in a double ratio, compounded as well of negative as of positive quantity. Thus if A and B are worth. one thousand pounds each, and a third person gives twenty shillings to A, now A is become richer than B by one-tenth per cent., but if A gains twenty shillings from B, then A is become richer than B by two-tenths or one-fifth per cent., for A is worth one thousand and one pounds, and B is worth only nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds. The increase of our people, on this fruitful continent, will probably, in due time, have a good effect on the natives, if we do not shamefully neglect their conversion: if we were moderately attentive to our duty on this head, we have no reason to doubt of success. The Spaniard has at this day as many Christians as he has subjects in America, negroes excepted. We may more reasonably hope to make converts and good subjects of the Indians in amity with us, by using them well, when we grow numerous in their neighborhood, than the Spaniards could have expected to have done by their inexpressible cruelties, which raised the utmost aversion in the minds of the poor Indians against them and their religion together. One of their own friars who had not relinquished his humanity, tells us of an Indian prince, who just as the Spaniards were about to murder him, was importuned by one of their Religious to become a Christian; the priest told him much of heaven and hell, of joy and misery eternal; the prince desired to be informed which of the two places was allotted for the Spaniards? Heaven, quoth the priest; says the prince, I'm resolved not to go there. How different from this was the reflection of an Indian chief in Pennsylvania: * what is the matter, says he, with us that we are thus sick in our own air, and these strangers well? It is as if they were sent hither to inherit our land in our steads; but the reason is plain, they love the great God and we do not. Was not this Indian almost become a Christian? New England has many convert Indians, who are very good subjects, though no other colony had such long and cruel wars with its Indian neighbors. The pious benefactions of the people of England have in all ages equalled, if not surpassed, all instances of the kind in other countries. The mistaken piety of our ancestors gave a third part of the kingdom to the church. Their intentions were right though they erred in the object. Since the statutes against mortmain and superstitious uses, our great and numerous foundations of hospitals and alms-houses. are the wonder of foreigners. Some of these, especially of * 2 Brit. Emp. Fol. i. p. 162. the largest, are doubtless of great use, and excellently administered. And yet, if the numbers in this nation, who feel the woes of others and would contribute to relieve them, did but consider the cases of the people described in the last chapter, of the German emigrants, and even of the poor. Indians; they would be apt to conclude that there ought to be a blessing in store for these also. About eight pounds allowed to an indigent person here, may poorly support him, and this must be repeated yearly; but a little more, than double that sum, relieves him for life, sends him to our new world, gives plenty there to him and his posterity; putting them in possession of a good estate, of which, they may be their own stewards. But this is not all, that sum which settles one poor family in the colony does not end there; it in truth purchases an estate to be applied to like uses, in all future times. The author of these pages is credibly informed that the Trustees will reserve to themselves square lots of ground interspersed at proper distances among the lands, which shall be given away. As the country fills with people, these lots will become valuable, and at moderate rents will be a growing fund to provide for those whose melancholy cases may require assistance hereafter. Thus the settlement of five hundred persons will open the way to settle a thousand more afterwards with equal facility. Nor is this advance of the value of these lots of land a chimerical notion; it will happen certainly and suddenly. All the lands within fifty miles of Charlestown have within these seven years increased near fourfold in their* value, so that you must pay three or four hundred pounds for a plantation, which seven years ago you could have bought for a hundred pounds, and it is certain that fifty years ago you might have purchased at Charlestown for five shillings a spot of land which the owner would not sell at this day for two hundred pounds sterling. The legislature is only able to take a proper course for the transportation of small offenders, if it shall seem best, when the wisdom of the nation is assembled; I mean only those who are but novices in iniquity. Prevention is better than the punishment of crimes, it may reform such to make them servants to such planters as were reduced from a good con * Descr. Abreg. p. 9. dition. The manners and habits of very young offenders would meliorate in a country not populous enough to encourage a profligate course of life, but a country where discipline will easily be preserved. These might supply the place of negroes, and yet (because their servitude is only to be temporary) they might upon occasion be found useful against the French, or Spaniards; indeed, as the proportion of negroes now stands, that country would be in great danger of being lost, in case of a war with either of those powers. The present wealth of the planters in their slaves too probably threatens their future ruin, if proper measures be not taken to strengthen their neighborhood with large supplies of free-men. I would not here be understood to advance that our common run of Old-Baily transports would be a proper beginning in the infancy of Georgia. No, they would be too hard for our young planters, they ought never to be sent any where but to the sugar islands, unless we had mines to employ them. The property of the public, with regard to its immense debt, and the anticipation of taxes attending that debt, will probably be a reason to many worthy patrons, not to afford a large pecuniary assistance in parliament, though they give all other furtherance to this settlement, and yet powerful reasons might be offered why the commons of Great Britain, with justice to those that sent them, might apply a large sum of public money to this occasion. Let us suppose that twenty-five thousand of the most helpless people in Great Britain were settled there at an expense of half a million of money; the easiness of the labor in winding off the silk and tending the silk worm would agree with the most of those who throughout the kingdom are chargeable to the parishes. That labor with the benefit of land stocked for them gratis, would well subsist them, and save our parishes near two hundred thousand pounds a year directly in their annual payments; not to compute would also be saved indirectly, by the unwillingness of many pretended invalids to go the voyage, who would then betake themselves to industrious courses to gain a livelihood. I shall consider the benefit of employing them in raising silk when I come in the fifth chapter, to treat of the commerce of Carolina. I shall only here observe that the number of poor last mentioned, being thus disposed of, would send us goods, at least to the value of five hundred thousand pounds annually, to pay for their English necessaries; and that would be somewhat better than our being obliged to maintain them at the rate of two hundred thousand pounds a year here at home. I cannot dismiss this inquiry concerning the proper persons to plant this colony, without observing that the wisdom of the Roman state discharged not only its ungovernable distressed multitude, but also its emeriti, its soldiers, which had served long and well in war, into colonies upon the frontiers of their empire. It was by this policy that they elbowed all the nations round them. Their military hospital went a progress, we can trace its stages northward from the Tyber to the Po, to the Rhone, to the Rhine, to the Thames: the like advances they made on all sides round them, and their soldiers were at least as fond of the estates thus settled on them as ours can be of their pensions. What I said before in this chapter, with regard to the increasing fund, to arise by reserved lots of gound interspersed among the lands that will be distributed to the planters, will hold good in the same manner in such settlements as might be made at a national expense, so that twenty thousand people, well settled, will raise the value of the reserved lands, in such measure as will bring Great Britain to resemble the present Carolina in one happy instance, viz. that there is not a *beggar, or very poor person in the whole country. Then should we have no going to decay, no complaining in our streets. CHAPTER V. Of the present and (probable) future Trade of South Carolina and Georgia. Rice, Silk, Cotton, Wine, &c. THE present state of South Carolina and its commerce may give us an idea of the condition of the early settlements in the new colony of Georgia. The first essays in trade and husbandry will doubtless be in imitation of their nearest neighbors. We shall therefore consider these colonies together, * Descr. Abreg. p. 6. |