The Trustees of Georgia and the House of Commons, 1732-1752

HE founders of the charitable colony of Georgia are often pictured as impractical idealists, but they were at least practical enough to induce the British government to pay for their new colony when private funds proved insufficient. The Trustees who governed Georgia between 1732 and 1752 spent about ?155,000 on their enterprise, more than ?136,000 of which was granted by Parliament.' In addition, the Treasury paid for the colony's military expenses, which totalled over 1ioo,ooo during the war with Spain in the I740's.2 The government, therefore, contributed better than go per cent of Georgia's financial support. But while it is hardly possible that the Trustees could have kept their colony going more than a year or two without being subsidized by public money, this subsidization was unorthodox, for the government had never before supported a privately operated colony. To be sure, Georgia was strategically valuable in England's struggle with Spain and France for southeastern America. The colony's operation was expected to benefit the British economy, producing needed raw materials, like silk, and relieving unemployment at home. Its establishment was a public-spirited action; the Trustees were working without pay to make a new home in America for unfortunate Englishmen and persecuted foreign Protestants. But the England of Sir Robert Walpole was no welfare state, and his government would scarcely have been persuaded to pay almost the entire bill for Georgia, no matter how worthy a project the colony was, if its promoters had not been public men and hard to refuse. So it is significant that a large number of the Trustees of Georgia were also members of Parliament

Commons · House of Commons · Political science · Politics · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Law · Public Administration

• Philanthropy as politics

  Open Access•Arye L Hillman•European Journal of Political…•2024

  Add to list

• Recent Contributions to American Economic History

  Open Access•Lawrence A Harper•The Journal of Economic History•1959

  Add to list

• Planting families

  Brandon Marsh, Ben Marsh•The History of the Family•2007

  Add to list