To Oglethorpe and to the Trustees they had explained their scruples,
making freedom of conscience an essential consideration
of their settling in Georgia, and from them they had received assurances
that only freeholders were liable to military duty.
Therefore they had claimed no land as individuals, but had been content
to live, and labor, and be called "servants", paying each week
for men to serve in the night watch, in place of the absent owners
of the two town lots. In Savannah their views were well known,
and to yield to orders from a Magistrate, who openly declared
that promises made by the Trustees, who had put him in office,
were not worth regarding, and who threatened them with mob violence,
would have been to brand themselves as cowards, unworthy members of a Church
which had outlived such dire persecution as that which overthrew
the ancient Unitas Fratrum, and recreant to their own early faith,
which had led them to abandon homes and kindred in Moravia,
and seek liberty of conscience in another kingdom. That Georgia needed
armed men to protect her from the Spaniards was true, but equally so
she needed quiet courage, steady industry, strict honesty, and pious lives
to develop her resources, keep peace with her Indian neighbors,
and win the respect of the world, but these traits were hardly recognized
as coin current by the frightened, jealous men who clamored
against the Moravians.
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