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4 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
the age; and during this period of transition British allegiance had
shifted from the Highland Stuarts to the German House of Brunswick.
It was from George II, of England, a Hanoverian, that the infant
colony received its baptismal name. When the proposition to establish
Georgia was first launched, the zeal for colonization had commenced to
languish. As a money-making investment, the planting of future em
pires in America, had failed to satisfy the British love of acquisition, at
least in its craving for immediate dividends; and these colonies had come
to be regarded in the light of liabilities rather than as assets. -But the
motive of philanthropy had hitherto been lacking in the colonial enter
prises of England. It was now proposed to found in America an asylum
for indigent but honest debtors; and since to the prospect of gain was
added this new incentive, appealing to the better nature of Britons, the
king was disposed to look with favor upon Oglethorpe's project. More
over, the proposed experiment, while helping to solve a most difficult
sociological problem, was likely to yield the crown large revenues, in the
production of raw silk.*
Thus Georgia came into .existence as the youngest of the English
colonies in North America. She was also the last, as we shall see later,
to lower the colonial flag. This reluctance to espouse the patriotic cause,
when such an espousal meant separation from the mother country, exposed
Georgia to the criticism of her sister colonies. But she persisted in her
loyalty to the Crown of England; and when she did at last sever the tie
of allegiance it was only in response to the call of blood from the com
mons of Lexington.
There were manifold reasons for this hesitation on the part of
Georgia. She occupied an exposed position on the extreme southern
frontier. She needed the protection of the mother country against sav
age Indians on the one hand and against hostile Spaniards on the other;
and she stood in greater need of this protection than did any other
province of England. Her territory, though vast in extent, was sparsely
settled. Immigrants had been slow in swelling her population, after the
initial coast settlements were planted; and she had not accumulated
wealth like the other colonies, due in the main to certain ill-advised re
strictions as to slavery, land-tenure and rum, imposed upon her by the
trustees. On the other hand, she had never been unduly oppressed by
the mother country; her royal governors had all been men of high char
acter and of benevolent dispositions; her grievances had all been kindly
considered, if not invariably adjusted; and her relations with England
had been uniformly of an agreeable nature. Moreover, not a few of the
trustees, her earliest sponsors, were still in life, including the great Ogle-
thorpe himself. Nor could she forget that it was from the father of
the reigning sovereign that not only her charter but also her name had
been derived; and this fact in itself bound her with peculiar tenderness
to the House of Brunswick. It constituted a sort of filial tie and caused
her to look with a pride akin to reverence upon the crown and scepter
of the Georges.
Though the youngest of the colonial group, Georgia, at the fountain-
head of her history, planted an institution which 'Survives today as the
* James E'oss MeCain, '' The Executive in Proprietary Georgia,'' p. 10.