GEORGIA.
Every philanthropist must take satisfaction in the founding of the colony in Georgia; for, perhaps beyond any other, it had its origin in the spirit of pure benevolence. The unfortunate debtor in England was by the laws liable to imprisonment; and thousands were, for this cause alone, languishing in prisons. The miserable condition of debtors and their desolate families, was at length thrust on the attention of Parliament. In 1728 a commission was appointed to inquire into the state of the poor, and report measures of relief. The work was accomplished, the jails thrown open, and the prisoners returned to their families. But, though liberated, they and their friends were in no condition to maintain themselves respectably in the land of their birth. There was a land beyond the sea where debt was not a crime, and poverty not necessarily a disgrace. To provide somewhere a refuge for the poor of England, and the distressed Protestants of other countries, the commission appealed to George II. for the privilege of planting a colony of such persons in America. A charter was issued giving the desired territory to a corporation, for twenty-one years, to be held in trust for the poor. In honor of the king the new province was named Georgia. The high-souled philanthropist who initiated and went steadily forward in this enterprise was James Oglethorpe. Born a loyalist, educated at Oxford, a high churchman, a soldier, a member of Parliament, benevolent, generous, full of sympathy, and far-sighted in comprehending the results of his enterprise, he sacrificed much, giving the best position of a life so full of energy and promise to the noble charity of providing homes for the poor, under such conditions that the largest benefit could be received by them without any sense of degradation. Ridpath says: “The magnanimity of the enterprise was heightened by the fact that he did not believe in the equality of men, but only in the duty of the strong to protect the weak, and sympathize with the lowly. Oglethorpe was the principal member of the corporation, and to him the personal leadership of the first colony planted on the banks of the Savannah was naturally intrusted. His associations were with cultured people, and his refined tastes would be subjected to some crucial tests by the rude scenes in the wilderness, and his association with unlettered men. But he was not a man to shirk responsibility, and promptly determined to share the privations, hardships, and dangers of his colony.
“With one hundred and twenty emigrants, in January, 1735, he safely reached the coast, proceeded up the river, and selected, for the site of his first settlement, the high bluff on which Savannah was built. There, amidst the pines, was soon seen a village of tents and rude dwellings, the nucleus of the fine city, intended for the capital of a new commonwealth, in which there would be freedom of conscience and no imprisonment for debt.”
[End of Required Reading for April.]
