In South Carolina, "regulators" were not rebels, but a vigilante force of propertied elite men. They co-operated with their colonial government for their entire active time. The South Carolina regulators were a much smaller organization than the mass movement in North Carolina. There were 100 known regulators, of whom 32 became justices of the peace, and 21 were militia leaders. Thirty-one owned slaves, and 14 owned 10 or more. Their primary aim was to protect themselves and their assets from bandits; their secondary purpose was to get courts, churches and schools established in their quickly growing communities. The only court in the colony was in Charleston, through which all legal documentation had to go. The inland settlers had the sympathy of the coastal elite, but the circuit court act, which would establish the jails, courts, sheriffs and 14 judicial districts, was held up by a dispute with the Parliament of Great Britain concerning the tenure of judges.