vertheless, an undaunted spirit. Agents were immediately dispatched to North-Carolina, Virginia, New-York and Boston, to solicit aid in men and arms. The Cherokees had not yet joined the confederacy, and a bold Indian trader agreed, for £500, to push through the intervening war parties of the enemy, and carry propositions to them for peace and alliance with the province. He succeeded in his daring enterprize, and the Cherokees became the staunch allies of the English, and did good service against the Creeks and Yemassees, during the rest of the war.

North-Carolina, grateful for the assistance afforded her two years before, against the Tuscaroras, now made great exertions to aid her suffering sister. Col. Maurice Moore, with a considerable body of troops, and some Tuscarora Indians, were quickly dispatched southward. They behaved with great gallantry, and were of such service as to receive a handsome gratuity and vote of thanks, at the close of the war.

Mr. Arthur Middleton, who was dispatched to Virginia, was not so fortunate. He succeeded in obtaining aid from Lieut. Gov. Spotswood, but upon such terms as were considered by the Assembly of Carolina as ungenerous exactions upon her necessities. One of the conditions was, that a slave should be sent to Virginia for every soldier sent to Carolina, to labour during the absence of said soldier. This was, certainly, a very heavy requisition, as it had been found necessary to embody a large number of the negroes for the defence of the province; and, commanded by white officers, they fought bravely against the Indians. There were probably a regiment of them at one time in the service, as their commander, T. Hastings, had the rank of Colonel. A large number were employed in transporting supplies to the different garrisons; many had been killed, or run off to St. Augustine, and the few that remained were scarcely able, by their labours, to supply the province with provisions. Under such circumstances, the condition imposed by Virginia was peculiarly hard and singularly ungenerous; and we find, accordingly, that upon the first repulse of the enemy the Virginia troops were sent back.

Governor Hunter, of New-York, showed a proper sympathy in the sufferings of Carolina. A frontier colony itself, New-York had too often experienced the desolation

of an Indian war not to feel for Carolina, under similar circumstances. The Six Nations (or rather the Five Nations then) had been her bulwark in these difficulties. Gov. Hunter now endeavoured to enlist them in the cause of Carolina. How far he succeeded does not appear, unless we attribute the assistance of the Tuscaroras to his influence, rather than to that of North-Carolina.

New-England also, after her natural manner, made her contribution also-for a consideration. We sent her our produce, and what money we could get, and she benevolently sent us, in return, a supply of arms and ammunition. Her records nowhere state that her charities were unprofitable to herself!

But, as ever, in such emergencies, the colonist looked to England chiefly for support. Great was their indignation, therefore, when the Proprietors appropriated only £400 towards the defence of the province. The colonists had also petitioned the crown for assistance, and a correspondence ensued between the Board of Trade and the Proprietors. In this correspondence, the king proposed to assist the province, if the proprietors would relinquish their charter, and receive a fair compensation for their property-pretty much as it was afterwards settled, in 1729. The Proprietors refused to give up their charter, but pledged themselves to appropriate all the monies they received from the province to its defence. Had this been done in good faith, it might have been of considerable assistance; but, upon an investigation of the matter by the Commons, it was found that, whilst they held this language in England, they had sent positive instructions to their receiver-general to make punctual returns to them. Duplicity was thus added to neglect, and the people began to consider the proprietary charter as the only bar to the fostering care of the crown. When the war was nearly over, a donative of the quit-rents was offered the Assembly, but refused, upon very sufficient reasons. Had it been accepted, they would have become the agents of the Proprietors for the collection of a tax, always unpopular, and now, from the exhausted state of the country, yielding scarcely any revenue. By this time, too, they had determined to throw off the proprietary yoke. and only waited for time and opportunity to embody the widely pervading discontent into an organized resistance.

A debt of £80,000 pounds had been incurred in support of the war, and could only be liquidated by the ruinous measure of enlarging the currency. To add to the universal embarrassment, the proprietors, with a most shortsighted policy, denied to develope the resources of the province, by refusing to grant lands to emigrants, or even for the support of the public garrisons; but ordered them to be surveyed in large bodies, or baronies, of 12,000 acres each, allowing a tenantry, but no right in the soil.

This measure was not only considered very injurious, but also insulting to the dignity and destructive to the credit of the province. Upon the expulsion of the Yemassees from their settlements, back of Port Poyal, the colonists naturally thought that land, won by their arms. and purchased with their blood, might very properly be appropriated to the common good. In this spirit they passed an act, granting a certain number of acres to each new settler, and appropriating £3,000 towards paying the passage money of such Protestants as would embark from Europe. Upon the faith of this act, a large number of Irish arrived in Charlestown, and were settled in good faith upon the Indian lands. But orders from the Proprietors shortly afterwards arrived, and the poor settlers were compelled to vacate their possessions. The majority of them emigrated to Pennsylvania, and thus deprived Čarolina of a valuable population, at a time when it was most needed.

Consider a people under so many embarrassments and causes of discontent, labouring by legislation to throw off the load that pressed them to the earth; and when they had succeeded, as they hoped, by the passage of three acts, to find these repealed by the Proprietors, who had signally failed to protect the country, in the wars which made such measures necessary! At this critical juncture, news came that the Spaniards at Havana were preparing a powerful fleet to attack Charlestown. The tax act was one of the three repealed, and the Governor, thus deprived of all other resources, found it necessary to call out the militia en masse. Thus was the long wished for opportunity for union and organization afforded. Like the Romans, with the enemy at the gates, they determined to extract their liberties from the dangers of their country. Forming themselves into an association, they abandoned,

rather than overthrew, the proprietary government. Fortunately, the Spanish fleet was repulsed from New Providence, and afterwards scattered by a storm.

The revolutionists had evidently nothing to fear from the proprietors. Two revolutions, or, more properly speaking, rebellions, had previously occurred within their grant, and on both occasions the offenders had escaped unpunished. Shaftesbury, himself, had pleaded for Culpepper, and Seth Sothel was permitted to die quietly in NorthCarolina, without even rendering an account of his usurp-. ed authority.

Thus ended, in 1719, the proprietary government of South-Carolina, under which the colonists, for nearly fifty years, had endured many vicissitudes of fortune. Great disorders had grown up under it, and demanded a reform. Justice was no longer to be had in the province. Judge Trott was alone possessed of all its judicial power. He was, at the same time, Judge of the Common Pleas and King's Bench, and of the court of Vice Admiralty: so that no prohibition could issue against the proceedings of that court, he being, in that case, to grant a prohibition against himself. He was also a member of Council, and, therefore, of the Court of Chancery; and, at one time, had a negative upon the passage of any law. Such a jumble of offices in one hand had never, probably, got together before, under an English government. It produced the most lamentable consequences. The Indian trade, too, had been most miserably managed. Whether as a perquisite of the Governor or conducted by commissioners, it had proved equally dangerous to the safety of the colony. The traders, contrary to law, would credit the Indians for large amounts, and then seize upon their persons, and sell them as slaves, in satisfaction of their debts. Hence the frequency of Indian wars. At the breaking out of the Yemassee war, these Indians alone were calculated to owe the traders £10,000.

There is a circumstance connected with the transfer of the government to the crown not generally known: viz., an attempt, on the part of the dissenters, to sell the government to some Quaker gentlemen. It may be the same scheme mentioned in the English act of 1720, for the "suppression of bubbles." The quiet and prosperous condition of Pennsylvania probably suggested it, as the

best for their interests; and, although it failed, there is evidence to show that there was a strong party in favour of such a transfer. The seditious conduct of Landgrave Thomas Smith and his son, under the administration of Lieut. Gov. Arthur Middleton, for which they were imprisoned and prosecuted for high treason, may probably be traced to this cause.

It cannot be denied that the history of South-Carolina is full of wars, seditions and tumults. The southern frontier of the English possessions in America, exposed to the attacks of the Spaniards, French, and numerous Indian tribes, she was constantly sounding the alarum; her look-outs were perpetual monuments upon her coasts; and her rangers were incessantly scouting from one frontier post to another. These external dangers did not always produce quiet within, but engendered a bold and warlike spirit among the people; and, in no one instance, however pressing the danger, does it appear that they lost their self-reliance. It is remarked by colonial historians, that the success of the French, who had a very small population on the American continent, compared with the English, was owing to the fact that they were pretty much under one government, and always acted in concert with one another.* Whereas the English, divided into provinces, regal, proprietary and charter in their governments, with a variety of rights and privileges, never acted together; but oftentimes jealousies would prevail when the best understanding was necessary to their safety. This selfish spirit does not seem to have existed in SouthCarolina. She was ever as ready to assist her neighbours as to defend herself, and Georgia and North-Carolina both received her aid most liberally, whenever it was required. Columbia, S. C.

G.

*The better reason is to be found in the morale of the French, which was flexible and indulgent, and allowed them to assimilate more readily with the red men, to whom they condescended, with whose people they soon incorporated, whose women became their wives, etc. The English race was of more unyielding temper. Stern, hard, inflexible, they appeared everywhere as masters, as conquerors, and never sought friendship simply, but always power and dominion. The English moral never made concessions to the inferior people. It always subjected or-destroyed them.-Ed. S. Q. R.