so that by the end of the present period the quantity annually exported from the province amounted to about 400,000 lbs. In the year 1732 a new colony was established on the unoccupied territory between Carolina and the Spanish possession of Florida, by a society of gentlemen, headed by General Oglethorpe, whose primary object was to provide by this means a place of settlement for destitute debtors after their liberation from gaol, and for foreign protestants who might be desirous of emigrating to a settlement where they would have the free exercise of their religion. A charter was granted by the crown establishing the independence of the new province, which was named Georgia, in honour of his majesty. The trustees immediately erected two towns. Savannah and Frederica; planted a nursery of white mulberry-trees, with a view to the production of silk; and imported a number of natives of Piedmont to tend the worms, as well as other foreigners to dress and improve by cultivation the vines which grew wild in the country in great abundance. "Yet," adds Anderson, "by having several idle drones, drunkards, and determined rogues, the prosperity of this colony was at first much retarded, as it was also by frequent alarms from the Spaniards, and, it must be confessed, in part also by an ill-judged though well-meant Utopian scheme for limiting the tenure of lands and for the exclusion of negro slaves; both which mistakes have since been rectified."[1] The rearing of the silkworm was gradually extended both in Georgia and Carolina; so that before the end of the present period the quantity of raw silk produced in Georgia exceeded ten thousand pounds weight annually.[2]
The growing strength and importance of these continental settlements, however, was regarded with a jealous eye by the elder sugar colonies in their neighbourhood; and so early as the year 1715 loud complaints began to be made by the planters of Jamaica and the other West India islands of what they considered as the illegal traffic that was springing up between them and the French and
