ment that allows them
liberty on the delivery of their all to their creditors, they come
destitute into the world again. As they have no money and little
credit, they find it almost impossible to, get into business,
especially when our trades are overstocked. They, therefore, by
contracting new debts, must return again into prison, or, how honest
soever their dispositions may be, by idleness and necessity will be
forced into bad courses, such as begging, cheating, or robbing. These,
then, likewise, are useless to the state; not only so, but dangerous.
But these (it will be said) may be serviceable by their labor in
the country. To force them to it, I am afraid, is impracticable; to
suppose they will voluntarily do it, I am sure is unlikely. The Colony
of Georgia will be a proper asylum for these. This will make the act
of parliament of more effect. Here they will have the best motive for
industry; a possession of their own, and no possibility of subsisting
without it.

"I have heard it said that our prisons are the properest places for
those that are thrown into them, by keeping them from being hurtful to
others. Surely this way of thinking is something too severe. Are these
people, with their liberty to lose our compassion? Are they to be shut
up from our eyes, and excluded also from our hearts? Many of very
honest dispositions fall into decay, nay, perhaps, because they are
so, because they cannot allow themselves that latitude which others
take to be successful. The ways that lead to a man's ruin are various.
Some are undone by overtrading, others by want of trade; many by being
responsible for others. Do all these deserve such hardship? If a man
sees a friend, a brother, a father going to a prison, where felons are
to be his society, want and sickness his sure attendants, and death,
in all likelihood his only, but _quick_ relief; if he stretches out
his hand to save him from immediate slavery and ruin, he runs the risk
of his own liberty, and at last loses it; is there any one who will
say, this man is not an object of compassion? Not so, but of esteem,
and worth preserving for his virtue. But supposing that idleness
and intemperance are the usual cause of his ruin. Are these crimes
adequate to such a punishment as confinement for life? But even yet
granting that these unhappy people deserve no indulgence, it is
certainly imprudent in any state to lose the benefit of the labor of
so many thousands.

"But the publ