was a region wholly unoccupied by white inhabitants at the time Oglethorpe and the youth Noah Stevens discussed the condition of the New World. The South Carolinians proposed to erect a barrier between themselves and the Spaniards in Florida, by planting an English Colony in that region. They asked the British government to do so; but there were great obstacles in the way, and so far they had failed to accomplish anything. Voluntary emigrants preferred a settled country, away from immediate danger; and a penal colony for British convicts was not desirable.

He

Oglethorpe, however, was a man with a great heart in his body which beat for all mankind. was very much exercised about the condition of prisoners for debt in Great Britain. These men, guiltless of any crime, were crowding the jails of the kingdom, and enduring sufferings more horrible than those inflicted upon negro slaves in the West Indies. Disease and moral degradation were making sad havoc among them. The hearts of the benevolent yearned to relieve them. A kindhearted citizen of London, of great wealth, bequeathed his fortune to the government to be employed in liberating the most deserving insolvent debtors from the jails, where they were doomed to hopeless indigence and misery by cruel laws oftentimes more cruelly administered.

This act of generosity caused Parliament to appoint a committee to inquire into the condition of prisoners for debt. Colonel Oglethorpe, as humane as he was brave, was at that time a member of Parliament, and it was he who made the suggestion that such a committee should be appointed. Oglethorpe was made chairman of the committee and at once entered with vigor and zeal upon his duties.

The revelations of those prisons are almost incredible. Howard's writings have left vivid pen pictures of those scenes, and the pencil of Hogarth given us actual delineations of them. The English merchant, unfortunate in business, often through no fault of his own, was suddenly hurled from a sphere of affluence and usefulness to the dreadful dens called prisons, with the vile and vicious as their only associates. So terrible was the fear of men incurring obligations which they could not pay, that healthy speculations, which are the life of business, almost ceased, and trade suffered.

Mr. Lossing, in his history "Our Country," cites an incident which appeals to the hearts of all feeling men, as it appealed to the soul of the founder of Georgia.

"Oglethorpe stood before one of those men, who had been a distinguished alderman in London when he was a boy, and had been highly esteemed for his many virtues and practical benevolence.

He

had also been a merchant prince, but had been ruined by great losses. His creditors sent him to prison. In an instant, he was compelled to exchange a happy home and delightful society for a loathsome prison cell and the company of the debased. One by one his friends, who could aid him in keeping famine from his wretched abode, disappeared, and he was forgotten by the outside world. Twenty-three years he had been in jail. Gray-headed, haggard, ragged and perishing with hunger, he lay upon a heap of filthy straw in a dark, damp, unventilated room. His devoted wife, who had shared his misery eighteen years, had just starved to death and lay in rags by his side, silent and cold. An hour before, he had begged his jailer, with outstretched arms of supplication to remove her body to the prison buryingground. The inhuman wretch, who knew his history, refused with an oath, saying, with horrid irony:

"Send for your alderman's coach to take her to the abbey!'

"The man expired, when he had finished his sad story. There and then, inspired by God, Oglethorpe conceived a scheme of providing an asylum for such as these beyond the sea, where they might enjoy comfort and happiness. He also resolved to bring such jailers to punishment. The records of

some of the English state trials show how earnestly he pursued these felons."

No sadder story was ever told than that of Charles Montreville, a young and influential London merchant. He had a young and beautiful wife and a child Annie, a beautiful little girl of but six summers, when he was led by a scheming knave to invest in an enterprise which caused his financial ruin. Montreville placed himself in the power of an unscrupulous monster, who in the end plunged him in prison for debt.

His faithful wife, with her child, made a noble effort to release the father; but no one could be found able or bold enough to aid him. Bond, his persecutor, received the prayer of wife and child for mercy with laughter and scorn. The wretch even taunted them and finally imprisoned both with the father. Long months and years the family languished neglected and forgotten in prison.

Little Annie, who in early life had been carefully nursed, was now the associate of ruffians and monsters, for there was no distinction shown among prisoners. Those confined for debt were no better than the pickpocket and highwayman. Father and mother kept their child near them, and starved themselves that she might have sufficient food.

The parents were both seized with slow and lin

gering fevers which sapped their lives away, and as they lay on their miserable pile of straw unable to rise they prayed God to come to the relief of their child. The brutal jailer had assured them that she should rot in the prison until the debt was paid. For six long years the family had languished in jail, and the parents were dying slowly but surely.

One day the jailer came with the miserable allowance of stale bread and water for them, when the father, by a great effort, rose to a sitting posture and said:

"I want to talk with you."

"Speak then, for I have no time to spare with such as you.

"We are dying."

"I've heard naught else for a fortnight, and you live yet," interrupted the jailer.

Yet we will soon be gone and there is our child growing to maidenhood. Will you not grant the last prayer of a dying father and release her from this wretched dungeon? She has done no wrong that she should suffer."

"Silence! I did not come to hear a sermon, growled the cruel jailer. "Release a prisoner whom I get a sixpence a day for keeping. Marry! you must think me a great dunce, to take bread out of my own mouth."