Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

21
Royal Government in North Carolina
As a royal colony, North Carolina government did not change greatly, but
much of the confusion and many of the land restrictions imposed by the proprietary
disappeared. Immigration now greatly increased and settlement
expanded in the south and middle of the coastal areas. These new settlers
included groups of Highland Scots in the Cape Fear area, who started emigrating
from Scotland in force after the Jacobite rebellion was crushed in
1745.
Royal governor of North Carolina for nearly two decades (1734-52),
Gabriel Johnston soon found himself in two basic quarrels with the Assembly.
One quarrel, over the perennial land question, began at the opening of
his administration: in the course of imposing land reform against the blank
patents, Johnston decided to employ the quitrent weapon. As a corollary, he
demanded that all quitrents be paid in sterling or in paper money, of which
the value would be fixed by governor and Council. He also demanded payment
of the backlog of arrears. This policy managed to alienate all the landowners
in the colony, large and small, and the Assembly refused to agree to
the change. The aroused settlers of Bertie and Edgecombe districts protested
to the governor that their poor estates had been honestly purchased and settled
with difficulty and that they had believed the lands were their own with
the exception of a small quitrent. But now Johnston proposed to increase the
quitrents and speedily collect the arrears; if he persisted the settlers would go
elsewhere, where they could own the fruits of their own labor. Indeed, in
1737, some five hundred people from Bertie and Edgecombe rose up in arms
to free a settler who they mistakenly thought had been harassed for failure to
pay quitrents. The Assembly tried to arrest Johnston's officials for seizing
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