Page:The Works of the Reverend George Whitefield, M.A., late of Pembroke-College, Oxford, and Chaplain to the Rt. Hon. the Countess of Huntingdon (1771 Volume 2).djvu/214

 LETTER DCCXIV.

To the Honourable Trustees of Georgia.

Honoured Gentlemen,     Gloucester, Dec. 6, 1748.

NOT want of respect, but a suspicion that my letters would not be acceptable, has been the occasion of my not writing to you these four years last past. I am sensible, that in some of my former letters, through hurry of business, want of more experience, and in all probability too great an opinion of my own sufficiency, I expressed myself in too strong, and sometimes unbecoming terms. For this I desire to be humbled before and man, knowing that, Peter-like, by a misguided zeal, I have cut off as it were those ears which otherwise might have been open to what I had to offer. However I can assure you, honoured gentlemen, to the best of my knowledge, I have acted a disinterested part, and notwithstanding my manifold mistakes and imprudence, I have simply aimed at 's glory and the good of mankind. This principle drew me first to Georgia; this, and this alone, induced me to begin and carry on the scheme of the Orphan-house; and this, honoured gentlemen, excites me to trouble you with the present lines. I need not inform you, honoured gentlemen, how the colony of Georgia has been declining for these many years last past, and at what great disadvantages I have maintained a large family in that wilderness, through the providence of a good and gracious. Upwards of five thousand pounds have been expended in that undertaking, and yet very little proficiency made in the cultivation of my tract of land, and that entirely owing to the necessity I lay under of making use of white hands. Had a negroe been allowed, I should now have had a sufficiency to support a great many orphans, without expending above half the sum which hath been laid out. An unwillingness to let so good a design drop, and having a rational conviction that it must necessarily, if some other method was not fixed upon to prevent it. These two considerations, honoured gentlemen, prevailed on me about two years ago, through the bounty of my good friends, to purchase a plantation in South-Carolina, where negroes are allowed. Blessed be, this plantation hath succeeded; and though at present I have only eight working hands, yet in all probability there will be more raised in one