Page:The American Slave Trade (Spears).djvu/129

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SLAVER LEGISLATION IN AMERICAN COLONIES
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tuted for all others in 1719. In 1734 there were 22,000 slaves to less than 8,000 whites in South Carolina, and this state of affairs was exceedingly alarming to the whites, especially as insurrections had been attempted.

An insurrection at Stono under a negro called Cato led to a prohibitive duty of £100 laid for a time on imported negroes. Again in 1760 the importation was prohibited through fear.

Georgia was first established by charitable Englishmen as a refuge for a lot of people who were imprisoned for debt — in trouble through misfortune only. The charter was granted June 9, 1732. It was to be "a silk, wine, oil and drug growing colony." And negro slavery was absolutely prohibited.

T. Rundle, one of the trustees of the corporation, in a sermon preached at St. George's, February 17, 1733, said: "Let avarice defend it as it will, there is an honest reluctance in humanity against buying and selling, and regarding those of our own species as our wealth and possessions." To this Oglethorpe himself, the colony's chief promoter, added that the slave-trade was "against the gospel as well as the fundamental law of England," and that "we refused as Trustees to make a law permitting such a horrid crime."

In view of the regulations covering rum and negro slaves, Du Bois, the distinguished historian of the negro race, is moved to say that "in Georgia we have an example of a community whose philanthropic founders sought to impose upon it a code of morals higher than the colonists wished."

The fact is, however, that Oglethorpe was Deputy Governor of the Royal African Company, the company