70 RELIGION, COLONISING AND TRADE
cannot be followed up here. The English paupets
were supplemented by various other species of
colonists. Highland soldiers were a great source of
strength, and among other immigrants were a small
number of persecuted Protestants from Central Europe,
refugees from the Archbishopric of Salzburg, whom
the S.P.CK. were instrumental in sending out.
Under circumstances of extraordinary difficulty which
might have been expected to make a fiasco inevitable,
Oglethorpe, whether as soldier or as beneficent auto-
crat, must be judged on the whole to have achieved
marked success. He administered the colony for ten
years till 1743, and in 1752, before the term of their
charter expired, the trustees handed over Georgia to
the Crown.
One feature in the story is of special concern in
connexion with the subject of this book. As we all
know, John Wesley, Charles Wesley, and Whitefield
all came on the stage in the infancy of Georgia, but no
missionary work was done by them among the natives.
That was not to come? until the Old Empire had
1 The main body of these persecuted Protestants were received
into Prussia. See Carlyle’s History of Frederick the Great. Book IX,
chap. iii, and Book X, chap. vi.
® Reference has already been made above on pp. 29-30, to
the letter written to Sir Robert Walpole, and published in 1731 by
F. Hall on The Importance of the British Plantations in America io this
Kingdom, etc., see Select Tracts relating to Colonies, No. 8, B.M., Catalogue
1029, E. 15. The writer is emphatic on the value of the plantations
and also on the loyalty of the people, ¢ especially where there are few
ot no clergy’ (p. 23), and he condemns the clergy as never going
among the Indians. Our priests, though I have been told some of
them have been sent over by a society for propagating the Gospel in
Foreign Parts, never go among the Indians ; nor did I ever hear of
any one Indian converted to the Christian faith by an English priest
except by Dr. Mather in New England, who from the joy of his heart
