Manner as on Sunday last, were wholly on the Doctrine of Justification and Regeneration; which we hoped would ere long be followed by an Exhortation to the Practice of all Christian Duties, that so our Faith might be shewn by our Works; otherwise a dry and inactive Faith, it is to be feared, might prove a dangerous State. …
William Stephens, A Journal of the Proceedings in Georgia (London, 1742), II, 243-254 passim.
44. Need of Relieving Georgia (1749)
BY EDMUND BURKE
Burke was a well-known English orator and statesman, who later sided with the colonies in their complaints of the home government. He is responsible for the book from which this extract is taken, though it was probably prepared by an unknown hack-writer.—Bibliography: Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, V, ch. vi; Channing and Hart, Guide, § 103.
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 dangerous inequality in the number of negroes and whites in such of our provinces where the former are used. South Carolina, in spite of its great wealth, is really in a more
