so overshaded are the vines planted in the woods, and so foggy is the season of the year when they ripen, that they seldom come to maturity. But as excellent grapes have been raised in gardens where they are exposed to the sun, we are apt to believe that proper methods have not been taken for encouraging that branch of agriculture, considering its great importance in a national view.” No methods whatever could have made viticulture a favored occupation, so long as cheap rum monopolized the drink market. Indeed, after the rum habit was once firmly established, it would have been somewhat difficult, even under the most favorable conditions, to introduce either brewing or wine-making, because, owing to the change in the taste of drinkers, there would have been no demand for either beer or wine. If during the first century, or even half century, rum had been as difficult to obtain and consequently as expensive as European spirits, the colonists would in all probability have brought viticulture or brewing to that stage of development which would have answered the domestic demand. We have it on the authority of a contemporaneous writer, that as early as 1680, Mr. Lynch, “an ingenious planter,” had raised “barley of which he intended to make malt for brewing English beer and ale.” He had all the necessary utensils for that purpose, and would probably have succeeded himself and found successful imitators, if it had not been for the rapid development of the rum traffic. [Sidenote: GEORGIA] General Oglethorpe’s description of the effects of the rum habit in the older settlements induced the trustees of this province to pass “an act to prevent the importation and use of rum and brandies in the province of Georgia, and any kinds of spirits or strong water whatsoever.” Far from being identical with Prohibition in the modern sense of the term, this act had for its object neither more nor less than a change of drinking habits, to be effected by the substitution of wine and beer for the drinks prohibited. The same trustees who passed the prohibitory act, sent over large quantities of Madeira wine and strong beer; and Oglethorpe exerted himself in furthering domestic brewing and viticulture, which he conceived to be the only practicable means of making the people temperate. In this, he merely reflected, as we have seen, the opinions of the early lawmakers of nearly every Colony; but he went further in carrying out this idea than they did—in fact, he went too far, and thus overreached his object.