In England there dwelled a man named James Edward Oglethorpe, son of Sir
Theophilus Oglethorpe of Godalming in Surrey. Though entered at Oxford, he
soon left his books for the army and was present at the siege and taking of
Belgrade in 1717. Peace descending, the young man returned to England, and
on the death of his elder brother came into the estate, and was presently
made Member of Parliament for Haslemere in Surrey.
His character was a firm and generous one; his bent, markedly humane.
"Strong benevolence of soul," Pope says he had. His century, too, was
becoming humane, was inquiring into ancient wrongs. There arose, among
other things, a belated notion of prison reform. The English Parliament
undertook an investigation, and Oglethorpe was of those named to examine
conditions and to make a report. He came into contact with the incarcerated
-- not alone with the law-breaker, hardened or yet to be hardened, but with
the wrongfully imprisoned and with the debtor. The misery of the debtor
seems to have struck with insistent hand upon his heart's door. The
parliamentary inquiry was doubtless productive of some good, albeit
evidently not of great good. But though the inquiry was over, Oglethorpe's
concern was not over. It brooded, and, in the inner clear light where ideas
grow, eventually brought forth results.
Numbers of debtors lay in crowded and noisome English prisons, there often
from no true fault at all, at times even because of a virtuous action,
oftenest from mere misfortune.
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