Whitefield’s Orphan House was again causing him anxiety. He wrote to a friend in America: “I want to make it a seminary of learning. If some such thing be not done, I cannot see how the _southern_ parts will be provided with ministers. All here are afraid to come over.”[212] He had also heard that his wife had lessened the Orphan-house family, and was about to return to England.[213] And, further, he had been informed that the trustees were about to allow the employment of slaves in Georgia.[214] These circumstances led him to write a long and remarkable letter to the trustees. The following is an extract:―― “GLOUCESTER, _December 6, 1748_. “HONOURED GENTLEMEN,――Not want of respect, but a suspicion that my letters would not be acceptable, has been the occasion of my not writing to you these four years last past. I am sensible, that in some of my former letters, I expressed myself in too strong and sometimes in unbecoming terms. For this I desire to be humbled before God and man. I can assure you, however, that, to the best of my knowledge, I have acted a disinterested part. I have simply aimed at God’s glory, and the good of mankind. This principle drew me first to Georgia; this, and this alone, induced me to begin and carry on the Orphan House; and this, honoured gentlemen, excites me to trouble you with the present lines. “I need not inform you, how the colony of Georgia has been declining, and at what great disadvantages I have maintained a large family in that wilderness. Upwards of £5000 have been expended in that undertaking; and yet, very little proficiency has been made in the cultivation of my tract of land; and that entirely owing to the necessity I lay under of making use of white hands. Had negroes been allowed, I should now have had a sufficiency to support a great many orphans, without expending above half the sum that has been laid out. An unwillingness to let so good a design drop induced me, two years ago, to purchase a plantation in South Carolina, where negroes are allowed. This plantation has succeeded; and, though I have only eight working hands, in all probability, there will be more raised in one year, and with a quarter of the expense, than has been produced at Bethesda for several years past. This confirms me in the opinion, I have long entertained, that, Georgia never can be a flourishing province, unless negroes are employed.