Book Description
Excerpt from The Eighth Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Maryland State Colonization Society, to the Members and the Public, 1840 In this matter the Board have not been without their disappoint ments. Although the laws of the colony prohibited native traffic, the fruitful source of difficulty and dispute, without a license, except for clothing or provisions, - and although no licenses were issued, it was impossible to prevent the exceptions covering a much more extensive trade than was intended, the inclinations of the colonists, generally, with some honourable exceptions, leading them to prefer the easy profits of trade to the harder won profits Of agriculture. This was remedied, to a considerable extent, by the introduction of the paper currency mentioned in a former report, which found great favour with both natives and colonists, - and which, being issued sparingly, and with a View to the competency of the public store to redeem it in goods, has maintained its credit, and along with that its usefulness. But nothing has tended so much to force the colonists to pay attention to agriculture, as the difficulties thrown in the way of obtaining rice, and provisions generally, from the natives, by wars among the latter. What might, at first sight, have appeared to be an evil to the colony, was made a benefit to it by the results; and at the date of the last despatches, as Governor Russwurm writes, there was more land under cultivation, by a great deal, than there had been since the establish ment of the colony, and the feeling was becoming general among the colonists, that it was both unsafe and impolitic to rely for support upon any other labour than their own. The importance of this subject justifies its being dwelt upon. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.