es of America was that in
what was first called New Inverness on the Alatamaha river in Georgia,
but now known as Darien, in McIntosh County. It was established under
the genius of James Oglethorpe, an English general and philanthropist,
who, in the year 1728, began to take active legislative support in
behalf of the debtor classes, which culminated in the erection of the
colony of Georgia, and incidentally to the formation of a settlement of
Highlanders.

There was a yearly average in Great Britain of four thousand unhappy men
immured in prison for the misfortune of being poor. A small debt exposed
a person to a perpetuity of imprisonment; and one indiscreet contract
often resulted in imprisonment for life. The sorrows hidden within the
prison walls of Fleet and Marshalsea touched the heart of Oglethorpe--a
man of merciful disposition and heroic mind--who was then in the full
activity of middle life. His benevolent zeal persevered until he
restored multitudes, who had long been in confinement for debt, and were
now helpless and strangers in the land of their birth. Nor was this all:
for them and the persecuted Protestants he planned an asylum in America,
where former poverty would be no reproach, and where the simplicity of
piety could indulge in the spirit of devotion without fear of
persecution or rebuke.

The first active step taken by Oglethorpe, in his benevolent designs was
to move, in the British House of Commons, that a committee be appointed
"to inquire into the state of the gaols of the kingdom, and to report
the same and their opinion thereupon to the House." Of this committee
consisting of ninety-six persons, embracing some of the first men in
England, Oglethorpe was made chairman. They were eulogized by Thompson,
in his poem on Winter, as

"The generous band,
Who, touched with human woe, redressive searched
Into the horrors of the gloomy gaol."

In the abodes of crime, and of misfortune, the committee beheld all that
the poet depicted: "The freeborn Briton to the dungeon chained," and
"Lives crushed out by secret, barbarous ways, that for their country
would have toiled and bled." One of Britain's authors was moved to
indite: "No modern nation has ever enacted or inflicted greater legal
severities upon insolvent debtors than England."[78]

While the report of the committee did honor to their humanity, yet it
was the moving spirit of Oglethorpe that prompted efforts to combine
present relief