They rewarded
Locke with the first patent of Carolina nobility, which carried with it
a grant of forty-eight thousand acres. For forty years they clung to the
fundamental constitutions, notwithstanding repeated rejections of them by
the colonists.
The fund of 1669 was used in planting what proved a permanent settlement of
English and Barbadians on the shores of Charleston Harbor. Thereafter the
Lords Proprietors relapsed into passiveness, commissioning a new governor
now and then and occasionally scolding the colonists for disobedience. The
progress of settlement was allowed to take what course it might.
The fundamental constitutions recognized the institution of negro slavery,
and some of the first Barbadians may have carried slaves with them
to Carolina. But in the early decades Indian trading, lumbering and
miscellaneous farming were the only means of livelihood, none of which gave
distinct occasion for employing negroes. The inhabitants, furthermore, had
no surplus income with which to buy slaves. The recruits who continued to
come from the West Indies doubtless brought some blacks for their service;
but the Huguenot exiles from France, who comprised the chief other
streamlet of immigration, had no slaves and little money.
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