4. ~Restrictions in Georgia.~ In Georgia we have an example of a
community whose philanthropic founders sought to impose upon it a code
of morals higher than the colonists wished. The settlers of Georgia were
of even worse moral fibre than their slave-trading and whiskey-using
neighbors in Carolina and Virginia; yet Oglethorpe and the London
proprietors prohibited from the beginning both the rum and the slave
traffic, refusing to "suffer slavery (which is against the Gospel as
well as the fundamental law of England) to be authorised under our
authority."[1] The trustees sought to win the colonists over to their
belief by telling them that money could be better expended in
transporting white men than Negroes; that slaves would be a source of
weakness to the colony; and that the "Produces designed to be raised in
the Colony would not require such Labour as to make Negroes necessary
for carrying them on."[2]
This policy greatly displeased the colonists, who from 1735, the date of
the first law, to 1749, did not cease to clamor for the repeal of the
restrictions.[3] As their English agent said, they insisted that "In
Spight of all Endeavours to disguise this Point, it is as clear as Light
itself, that Negroes are as essentially necessary to the Cultivation of
_Georgia_, as Axes, Hoes, or any other Utensil of Agriculture."[4]
Meantime, evasions and infractions of the laws became frequent and
notorious.
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