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Colonial and State Records of North Carolina
Letter from the Board of Trade of Great Britain to Gabriel Johnston [Extract]
Great Britain. Board of Trade
June 17, 1748
Volume 04, Pages 870-872

[B. P. R. O. North Carolina. B. T. Vol. 21. P. 311.]

Sir, [Gov. Gabriel Johnston]

We have never received the state of the Province under your government promised us in your letter of 6th June 1746 nor any Acts Minutes of the Council or Assembly nor any other public papers which you are directed by your Instructions to send us. We must desire that you no longer delay supplying these omissions and we must also remind you of our General Heads of Enquiry formerly sent you to which we desire you will as soon as possible send us full and particular answers that we may be minutely informed of every circumstance relative to the state of your Province and that you will every six months send us accounts of any alterations that may happen therein.

We must likewise desire you to send us an exact state of His Maj. Council in your Province with the names of such as are dead or absent

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and the dates of their respective licenses for such absence and for how long also the names of persons proper to supply any vacancies that may happen in the said Council pursuant to your instructions.

Inclosed we send you a printed Copy of an Act passed here in the last Session of Parliament for encouraging the making of Indigo in the British Plantations in America which we hope will promote the cultivation of this valuable commodity in all His Maj. Colonies where the same is or may be produced and We recommend it to your particular care that the several provisions therein to prevent indigo of the growth of Foreign Countries being imported from our own Colonies into Great Britain in order fraudulently to obtain the bounty be honestly and punctually complied with so far as they are to be executed in your Province. It is of no less consequence that the indigo of Carolina should be merchantable and of a proper standard as upon this will depend the continuation of the Bounty You are therefore to recommend it to the Planters to be very careful in the planting curing and packing their indigo to the end that they may equal if not excel the French in this Commodity

You are to transmit to us by the first opportunity an account of the several Plantations of indigo in your Province the names of the planter with the quantity of indigo they make as also the quantity of indigo exported from the Province distinguishing the time when and the port where shipped—the names of the vessels and ports to which bound as also an account of the quantity of Foreign indigo if any imported into your Province and the time when imported together with an account of such indigo exported distinguishing the time when and the Port where shipped the names of the Vessels and the Ports to which bound and you must not fail to send us the same accounts regularly every six months that we may be as exactly informed as the nature of the thing will admit of the increase or decrease of the produce & exports of indigo from the Province under your Government.

We likewise send you inclosed an Act passed in the 20th year of His present Maj. Reign entituled An Act to extend the provisions of an Act made in the 13th year of His present Maj. Reign entituled an Act for naturalizing Foreign Protestants and others therein mentioned as are settled or shall settle in any of His Maj. Colonies in America to other Foreign Protestants who conscientiously scruple the taking of an oath.

So we bid you heartily farewell & are

You very loving friends, &c.,
J. PITT
B. LEVISON-GOWER
J. GRENVILLE
DUPPLIN

Whitehall June 17th 1748

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P. S. We think proper to inform you that Preliminaries for a Peace have been signed at Aix-la-Chapelle by the Ministers of all the Powers engaged in the War

J. PITT.