For new colonial ventures opportunity was not lacking. Widely separated settlements along the American coast were cut in twain by New Netherland and flanked on either side by the possessions of France and Spain. To forestall rivals in occupying all the territory claimed by England, and to exploit intelligently its commercial resources, seemed at once a public duty and a private opportunity. And no region was thought more important, either in a commercial or a military way, than the Cape Fear and Charles River valleys. So at least reasoned the Earl of Clarendon, Ashley Cooper, and Sir John Colleton; to them, associated with five others, was accordingly issued in 1663, and again in 1665, a proprietary grant to the Carolinas. The patentees, upon whom the charter conferred the usual right to establish and govern colonies, expected that the surplus population of Barbados and the Bahamas, where capital and slavery were driving out white laborers and small farmers, would readily migrate to the Charles River, and there engage in the cultivation of commodities--such as silk, currants, raisins, wax, almonds, olives, and oil--which, being raised neither in England nor in any English plantation, would serve to redress the balance of trade and doubtless net a handsome profit to those with faith to venture the first costs of settlement. With the English market assured, a thriving trade and a prosperous colony seemed the certain result. In these expectations the patentees were disappointed. Dissenters already settled in the region of Albemarle Sound were little disposed to submit to restrictions which they had left Virginia to avoid. In 1665 and 1666 some discontented Barbadians, making an essay to settle on the coast farther south, found the country less inviting than they had been led to expect, and returned to Barbados as the lesser evil. The terms on which the proprietors granted land, liberal enough but frequently changed; restrictions laid on trade almost before there was anything to exchange; the doctrinaire Fundamental Constitutions which John Locke, fresh from the perusal of Harrington, wrote out in the quiet of his study for governing little frontier communities the like of which he had never seen,--all had little effect but to irritate those who were already on the ground and discourage others from going there. In 1667, there were no inhabitants in Carolina south of Albemarle Sound; in 1672 scarcely more than four hundred. Not silk and almonds but provisions were raised; for it was necessary "to provide in the first place for the belly" before endeavoring to redress the balance of England's commerce. As late as 1675 the proprietors complained that an expenditure of L10,000 had returned them nothing but the "charge of 5 or 600 people who expect to live on us." An exaggeration, doubtless; but in truth the Carolinas never profited the proprietors anything, never drew off much of the surplus population of Barbados, nor supplied England with olives