Excerpt from Calendar of State Papers Colonial Series, America and West Indies, Vol. 45: Preserved in the Public Record Office; 1739

North Carolina, Rhode Island and Maryland presented replies through their agents in London, that is to say, without a letter of explanation from the governor. The last responses to reach Whitehall, those of Virginia and Jamaica, arrived at the Plantations Office on 22 July 1740. A little over a year, therefore, went by in circulating the inquiry and obtaining answers. It seems a long time but it would be interesting to know if any other eighteenth - century empire, Spanish, Portuguese, French or Dutch, launched and completed an investigation of like complexity in less than twelve months.

As in the Calendar volumes for 1737 and 1738 Georgia makes a large and important contribution to the contents of vo]. XLV, much of it consisting of records of a private nature at the time of their creation though now and since 1752 when Georgia became a crown colony part of the public archives. It was this slight ambiguity of status that led to the exclusion of those records from Vols XXXVII - XLII, a decision reversed in Vol. XLIII for 1737. By 1739 most of Georgia's records were still of a recognizably private kind: the Trustees' correspondence with their officers and settlers in Georgia, their domestic letters, and their minutes. The Trustees reported annually to Parliament but direct correspondence between Georgia and the departments concerned with colonial administration was still rare. As yet there were no Customs officers in the colony, though their absence was beginning to be noticed and exploited (nos 280, No assembly had been constituted in Georgia, so no laws were enacted there for scrutiny by the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations. Legislative authority remained with the Trustees in London who seldom used it. In 1739 they passed only one law, for appointing pilots and raising a duty on shipping to pay for that service (no This Act brought them into touch with the Commissioners, with disappointing results. The law obtained the approval of the board's legal adviser, Francis Fane, but was opposed by South Carolina's agent and still awaited confirmation at the end of the year (nos 336, The Commissioners at this time kept no Georgia files, placing such papers as they preserved among South Carolina's records (nos 336.

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