Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/93

1732] Oglethorpe and Georgia. 61 GEORGIA. In 1732 another colony was added to the twelve already in existence. The foundation of Georgia was, both in conception and in execution, the work of James Oglethorpe, as fully as the foundation of Pennsylvania was the work of Penn. Oglethorpe was born in 1698. After the Revolution, members of his family adhered to the Stewart cause ; and he did not wholly escape the suspicion of Jacobitism. After a short military career he settled down on the family property to which he had succeeded, entered Parliament and became a well-known figure in political life and in the fashionable and literary society of London. He was chairman of a Parliamentary committee for inquiring into the state of prisons. What he then saw and learnt tunied his thoughts to the necessity of colonisation. He may be said to have taken up afresh those conceptions of colonisation which had been present to the minds of statesmen in the Elizabethan age, but had been overlaid by other motives. The contemporaries of Gilbert and Ralegh thought of colonisation as a national enterprise, having among its chief objects the relief of the country from the burden of surplus population, and the creation of a check on Spanish aggression. In the actual formation and development of the colonies these considerations had passed out of sight; and the profit of individuals or the advantage of special religious communities had become the foremost consideration. Oglethorpe's design was by the establishment of a colony adjoining South Carolina to form a home where men, instead of pining in debtors' prisons, might live in industry and comfort, and also to establish for the whole body of colonies a barrier against Spain. Accordingly Oglethorpe and his associates, amongst them the well-known philanthropist Thomas Coram, obtained from the Crown a grant of land south of the Savannah river. The grantees were formed into a corporation entitled "Trustees for the Colonisation of Georgia," with full powers of administration for twenty- six years, after which the control of the colony was to revert to the Crown. For the present the appointment of all officials was vested in the Trustees ; nor were the settlers to enjoy any rights of self-government save such as the Trustees might grant them of favour. The needful funds were obtained by contributions from the Trustees themselves, and by appeals to public benevolence. In October, 1732, Oglethorpe set sail with 114 settlers. The spot chosen for the settlement was a high ground on the south bank of the river Savannah, about twenty miles from its mouth. The site was well chosen, as the river was navigable by large vessels ; while the colony was guarded on the water-side by a high and precipitous bank, and landwards by the swampy and impenetrable nature of the country. The settlement CH. II.