with permanent benefits, by which honest but unfortunate
industry could be protected, and the poor enabled to reap the fruit of
their toils, which now wrung out their lives with bitter and unrequited
labor. On June 9, 1732, a charter was procured from the king,
incorporating a body by name and style of the Trustees for Establishing
the Colony of Georgia in America. Among its many provisions was the
declaration that "all and every person born within the said province
shall have and enjoy all liberties, franchises and immunities of free
denizens, as if abiding and born within Great Britain." It further
ordained that there should be liberty of conscience, and free exercise
of religion to all, except Papists. The patrons, by their own request,
were restrained from receiving any grant of lands, or any emoluments
whatever.

The charter had in view the settling of poor but unfortunate people on
lands now waste and desolate, and also the interposing of the colony as
a barrier between the French, Spanish and Indians on the south and west
and the other English colonies on the north. Oglethorpe expressed the
purpose of the colonizing scheme, in the following language:

"These trustees not only give land to the unhappy who go thither;
but are also empowered to receive the voluntary contributions of
charitable persons to enable them to furnish the poor adventurers
with all necessaries for the expense of the voyage, occupying the
land, and supporting them till they find themselves comfortably
settled. So that now the unfortunate will not be obliged to bind
themselves to a long servitude to pay for their passage; for they may
be carried gratis into a land of liberty and plenty, where they
immediately find themselves in possession of a competent estate, in a
happier climate than they knew before; and they are unfortunate,
indeed, if here they cannot forget their sorrow."[79]

Subsidiary to this it was designed to make Georgia a silk, wine, oil and
drug-growing colony. It was calculated that the mother country would be
relieved of a large body of indigent people and unfortunate debtors,
and, at the same time, assist the commerce of Great Britain, increase
home industries, and relieve, to an appreciative extent, the impost on
foreign productions. Extravagant expectations were formed of the
capabilities of Georgia by the enthusiastic friends of the movement. It
was to rival Virginia and South Carolina,