Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

20
The North Carolina Proprietary
After the Tuscarora war, North Carolina politics settled down into the
familiar colonial pattern of a proprietary party, centered in the appointive
governor and the Council, stressing the prerogative of the executive, and confronting
a popular and liberal force concentrated in the Assembly.
Wracked so recently by rebellion and war, North Carolina did not join
South Carolina in the latter's successful revolt against the proprietary in 1719.
The popular party resisted such instances of executive tyranny as imposing
conscription to fight against the Indians without Assembly approval. The
most severe quarrel of the people with the proprietary occurred over that veteran
irritant, the quitrent. The proprietary naturally wanted to be paid the
quitrent in sterling. In this era, however, North Carolina's underdeveloped
economy used nineteen marketable commodities as media of exchange, or
money, including beef, pork, butter, cheese, pitch, feathers, wheat, leather and
hides, skins and corn, as well as the more usual tobacco. In 1715, the Assembly
passed a law for payment of the quitrent in any of these commodities, at a
fixed scale of relative prices, with the quality of the commodities established
by two theoretically disinterested freeholders. The natural result was payment
of the hated quitrents in whatever happened to be the least valuable commodity
at the fixed scale, and of the poorest possible quality.
The proprietors, having had the usual difficulty in collecting quitrents, had
decided at the turn of the century to appoint a network of agents to collect
the payments. The agents were empowered to seize and sell the lands of those
who failed to pay. In 1715, however, the Assembly deprived the agents of the
power to place a value on the seized goods, the value being put into the books
of the original owner and the purchaser. This act helped block effective
91