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60 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
begin for ten years. Within a month .after its execution, the grant was
to be registered with the auditor of plantations. The grantee obligated
himself to repair at once to Georgia with his servants, there to remain
for at least three years, building houses and cultivating his lands.
Within ten years from the date of grant he was to have 200 acres under
cultivation and 200 white mulberry trees planted. The grantee was not
to leave the province without special permission from the authorities.
Male servants, when released from contracts, provided they had been
four years in the province, were to be given, on application, twenty
acres of land in tail male, under certain conditions and restrictions.
But an equally drastic law enacted by the trustees was a law forbid
ding the introduction of slaves into the Colony of Georgia. There was
no precedent for such a regulation in any of the other colonies,- but a
law of this character was deemed essential to a province organized on a
strictly military basis. Nor were other reasons lacking. In the first
place, a great majority of the colonists were wholly without means either
to purchase slaves or to support them under the peculiar system of land
tenure which the trustees thought it wise to adopt. One of the main
sources of weakness, in the case of South Carolina, was due to the pre
ponderating number of slaves. These considerably outnumbered the
whites who were powerless, on the one hand, to protect them against the
mischievous wiles of the Spaniards or to subdue any insurrectionary
spirit, among them, on the other. Moreover, South Carolina weakened
by an excessively large slave population was, in a most critical sense, at
the mercy of the foe, including not only the Spaniards but also the
French; nor was she without frequent visits from the Indians who kept
her borders constantly embroidered with crimson. Knowing her en
feebled condition, these enemies especially the Spaniards and the In
dians, were incessantly annoying; and since the design of a new colony
was to protect South Carolina it was important to avoid, therefore, what
in the latter province had proven an element of weakness.
To state another reason, the average cost of a negro servant at this
time was £30, a sum sufficient to defray the passage of a white man, sup
ply him with needed equipment, and support him for a whole year; and
to permit slaves, therefore, would only lessen the ability of the trustees
to maintain the white settlers. Moreover, on account of the limited
funds at the disposal of the trust, every slave sent over would mean a
white man displaced or a soldier withdrawn from the garrison. Thus to
allow slaves would be to subtract from the fighting strength of the prov
ince ; and since Georgia was to be .a barrier interposed between South
Carolina and her enemies, not only would she fail to give this desired
protection but her own security would be endangered, on account of her
closer contact with these foes who would show her no quarter.
Furthermore, it was argued that the ownership of slave property
would lessen a settler's inclination to perform individual labor; that
it would put a badge of servitude upon honest toil; and that, should the
head of a family be removed by death or incapacitated by sickness, or
should he be temporarily absent from home, his undefended household
would be at the negro's mercy: a menace serious at least in its possibili
ties. Besides, the Spaniards, when not enticing slaves into Florida would
be inciting them to insurrections. South Carolina though some distance