e laborers and small farmers, would readily
migrate to the Charles River, and there engage in the cultivation of
commodities--such as silk, currants, raisins, wax, almonds, olives, and
oil--which, being raised neither in England nor in any English
plantation, would serve to redress the balance of trade and doubtless
net a handsome profit to those with faith to venture the first costs of
settlement. With the English market assured, a thriving trade and a
prosperous colony seemed the certain result.

In these expectations the patentees were disappointed. Dissenters
already settled in the region of Albemarle Sound were little disposed to
submit to restrictions which they had left Virginia to avoid. In 1665
and 1666 some discontented Barbadians, making an essay to settle on the
coast farther south, found the country less inviting than they had been
led to expect, and returned to Barbados as the lesser evil. The terms on
which the proprietors granted land, liberal enough but frequently
changed; restrictions laid on trade almost before there was anything to
exchange; the doctrinaire Fundamental Constitutions which John Locke,
fresh from the perusal of Harrington, wrote out in the quiet of his
study for governing little frontier communities the like of which he had
never seen,--all had little effect but to irritate those who were
already on the ground and discourage others from going there. In 1667,
there were no inhabitants in Carolina south of Albemarle Sound; in 1672
scarcely more than four hundred. Not silk and almonds but provisions
were raised; for it was necessary "to provide in the first place for the
belly" before endeavoring to redress the balance of England's commerce.
As late as 1675 the proprietors complained that an expenditure of
L10,000 had returned them nothing but the "charge of 5 or 600 people who
expect to live on us." An exaggeration, doubtless; but in truth the
Carolinas never profited the proprietors anything, never drew off much
of the surplus population of Barbados, nor supplied England with olives
or capers. North Carolina raised tobacco, which was carried by New
England traders to Virginia or the Northern colonies. The inhabitants of
the Southern province, reinforced by French Huguenots and English
dissenters, exported provisions to the West Indies. Yet South Carolina,
disappointing to the proprietors, was destined in the next century, when
rice became its staple product, to serve in an almost ideal w