At the present day, the experiment made in Georgia over one hundred and sixty years ago, is highly interesting because it confirms the conviction, entertained by all those who have studied the drink question, that no temperance efforts can ever be successful unless they are accompanied by all the conditions that favor abundant production and consequent cheapness of good and palatable fermented drinks. Exert himself as he would, Oglethorpe could not supply beer or wine in such quantities and at such prices as to ensure the success of his measure. In the settlements of the Salzburgers the taste of the people helped to further his object; but even there, the drink called beer, which was made of molasses, sassafras and the tops of fir trees, proved but a poor substitute, scarcely calculated to satisfy a German palate. Oglethorpe fully understood that a steady and abundant supply of cheap beer was absolutely required to render the prohibitory act effective. In a letter to the trustees written at Fredericia,[4] under date of October 7, 1738, in which he urgently requested that fifty or sixty tuns of beer from the brewery of Hucks at Southwark be sent him, he said: “Cheap beer is the only means to keep rum out.” It is extremely doubtful, whether under then existing circumstances cheap beer would have sufficed to keep out rum. There were other considerations which militated against Oglethorpe’s purpose. His own people were dissatisfied with the law; they conceived it to be detrimental to their material interests, inasmuch as it debarred them from trading with the West Indies, “an excellent and convenient market for their lumber,” as Hewitt has it. Besides, they were of the opinion, held by many competent judges in our time, that the climate of the province rendered the use of rum advisable from a sanitary point of view. The Carolinians could not be prevented from bringing rum into the Colony, although after the first altercation, which arose on account of this practice, they promised to desist from it. Hence rum could easily be had; and it is not difficult to understand that so long as good rum could be had cheaply, men accustomed to ardent liquors would not at short notice make poor beer their everyday beverage. Even Oglethorpe’s immediate _entourage_ could not be induced to discard rum for the questionable drink which he furnished them from his brewery at Jekyl. “Settlers and officers,” says McCall, in his History of Georgia, “were known to retire from the presence of the general into an adjoining apartment in order to drink.” But, worse than all, the magistrates themselves, who had the power to license ale-houses, and were instructed to prevent and punish the sale of ardent spirits, engaged in the unlawful traffic, or openly connived at it.