per annum than the same number regimented, out of which, however, is to be deducted the pay of an officer to command the whole, which, rated at twenty shillings per day, a very bountiful and genteel allowance, leaves an annual clear saving to the Colony of £1,765.
As some of these forts will be convenient to the back inhabitants, the garrisons may be fed at much less expense than the Colony's troops at Cumberland can be, because the heavy charges of a long land carriage will be saved, savings which well merit the attention of a government, most especially when its treasury is well-nigh exhausted, and its subjects so little able to replenish it as our countrymen at present confessedly are.
But there is another very considerable expense which I had like to have forgotten, which this method of guarding our frontiers will render needless, and which therefore may be saved; for draughting the militia will probably hence be rendered unnecessary, which has frequently been done last year, and for aught that is known to the contrary, the Government may be necessitated to do the same the ensuing. And, should only six hundred of them be employed in defence of our frontiers, and stationed there only for one campaign, on the pay established by Act of Assembly, it would be such an addition to that load of debt and taxes under which the country at present labors, as, together with its unhappy circumstances in some other respects, must infallibly sink it beyond a possibility of emerging through a course of many years, how favorable a turn soever its present situation of affairs may take.
Such a chain of fortresses would also bring back the fugitives to their deserted plantations, would encourage others to prosecute anew their former schemes of seating the back lands,
