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 36 North and South Carolina. [i67o- aimed at preventing that tendency to scatter over the face of the country which marked the growth of Virginia. Every freeholder was to have, in addition to his country estate, a town-lot of one-twentieth the extent of his whole domain. This foreshadowed, though it can hardly be thought to have caused, the future development of South Carolina. Instead of a society of landholders, each living on his own estate, it was rather a society of wealthy traders living at Charleston and owning plantations inland. But this was due not so much to any deliberate design on the part of the Proprietors as to natural conditions the existence of one first-rate harbour and the insalubrious and unattractive character of the inland country, especially near the coast. This con- centration of the active life of the colony in Charleston had an important influence on the political history of the colony, by checking the development of local representation. The whole body of freemen met together at the capital and there elected a House of Representatives. This system was at once the result and the reacting cause of the backwardness of the country districts. It lasted till 1717, when the ordinary method of electing by counties was substituted. Of the first colonists of South Carolina only a portion came direct from England. The rest joined at Barbados, whence also came William Sayle, the governor. This no doubt had its effect in assimilating the life of the new colony to that of the West Indies. In one way this had a baneful effect on the future of the colony. Under the recognised economic conditions of that day slavery was certain to spring up ; and it was also certain that in such a climate the labouring class could not, like that of Virginia, consist largely of white men. Only the negro or the native could work in the climate of South Carolina. The colonists, accustomed to impose slavery on the weak and unresisting population of the West Indies, made a similar attempt with the Indians of the mainland, but, as might have been foreseen, with very different results. The proximity of the Spaniard on the southern frontier would have been in any case a source of danger. Instead of lessening this by securing the alliance of the savages, the settlers by repeated acts of kidnapping drove the natives into alliance with the Spaniard, while on the other hand they incurred the great displeasure of their southern neighbours by the encouragement which they gave to pirates. It is just to the Proprietors to say that they saw this danger and did their best to prevent both these practices. The dread of Indian attack and Spanish invasion was probably one of the influences which were at work to keep the settlers concentrated in Charleston. For the first quarter of a century of its existence nothing worse befell the colony than isolated Indian raids. But in 1701 war between Spain and England was imminent; and the colonists heard that a Spanish captain in command of 900 Indians was on his way to attack them. In order to anticipate the blow, James Moore, a