f, the
safety of the said Province is greatly endangered."[11] The trade,
however, by reason of the encouragement abroad and of increased business
activity in exporting naval stores at home, suffered scarcely any check,
although repeated acts, reciting the danger incident to a "great
importation of Negroes," were passed, laying high duties.[12] Finally,
in 1717, an additional duty of L40,[13] although due in depreciated
currency, succeeded so nearly in stopping the trade that, two years
later, all existing duties were repealed and one of L10 substituted.[14]
This continued during the time of resistance to the proprietary
government, but by 1734 the importation had again reached large
proportions. "We must therefore beg leave," the colonists write in that
year, "to inform your Majesty, that, amidst our other perilous
circumstances, we are subject to many intestine dangers from the great
number of negroes that are now among us, who amount at least to
twenty-two thousand persons, and are three to one of all your Majesty's
white subjects in this province. Insurrections against us have been
often attempted."[15] In 1740 an insurrection under a slave, Cato, at
Stono, caused such widespread alarm that a prohibitory duty of L100 was
immediately laid.[16] Importation was again checked; but in 1751 the
colony sought to devise a plan whereby the slightly restricted
immigration of Negroes should provide a fund to encourage the
importation of white servants, "to prevent the mischiefs that may be
attended by the great importation of negroes into this Province."[17]
Many white servants were thus encouraged to settle in the colony; but so
much larger was the influx of black slaves that the colony, in 1760,
totally prohibited the slave-trade. This act was promptly disallowed by
the Privy Council and the governor reprimanded;[18] but the colony
declared that "an importation of negroes, equal in number to what have
been imported of late years, may prove of the most dangerous consequence
in many respects to this Province, and the best way to obviate such
danger will be by imposing such an additional duty upon them as may
totally prevent the evils."[19] A prohibitive duty of L100 was
accordingly imposed in 1764.[20] This duty probably continued until the
Revolution.

The war made a great change in the situation. It has been computed by
good judges that, between the years 1775 and 1783, the State of South
Carolina lost twenty-five thousand