the exigencies of the public, such as warlike expeditions, raising
fortifications, providing military stores, and maintaining garrisons;
those no doubt rendered the measure sometimes necessary, and often
reasonable, but private interest had also considerable weight in adopting
it, and carrying it into execution. In the year 1737, a bill of exchange
on London, for a hundred pounds sterling, sold for seven hundred and
fifty pounds Carolina currency. Of this the merchants might complain, but
from this period they had too little weight in the public councils to
obtain any redress. The only resource left for them was to raise the
price of negroes, and British articles of importation, according to the
advanced price of produce, and bills of exchange. However, the exchange
again fell to seven hundred _per cent._ at which standard it afterwards
rested and remained.

[Sidenote] Small progress of Georgia.

By this time the poor colonists of Georgia, after trial, had become fully
convinced of the impropriety and folly of the plan of settlement framed
by the Trustees, which, however well intended, was ill adapted to their
circumstances, and ruinous to the settlement. In the province of
Carolina, which lay adjacent, the colonists discovered that there they
could obtain lands not only on better terms, but also liberty to purchase
negroes to assist in clearing and cultivating them. They found labour in
the burning climate intolerable, and the dangers and hardships to which
they were subjected unsurmountable. Instead of raising commodities for
exportation, the Georgians, by the labour of several years, were not yet
able to raise provisions sufficient to support themselves and families.
Under each discouragements, numbers retired to the Carolina side of the
river, where they had better prospects of success, and the magistrates
observed the infant colony sinking into ruin, and likely to be totally