and a Charter of Liberties was framed in which the powers and prerogatives of the government were defined. The commonwealth was made a representative democracy. The leading officers were the governor, an advisory council consisting of a limited number of members chosen for three years and a larger popular assembly to be elected annually. The proprietary conceded everything to the people; but the power of vetoing objectionable acts of the council was left in his hands.

Primitive Philadelphia was a marvel of growth and prosperity. In the summer of 1683 there were only three or four houses. The ground-squirrels were still undisturbed in their burrows and the wild deer were seen under the oaks and chestnuts. In 1685 the city contained six hundred houses! Schools had been established, and the printingpress had begun its work. In another year Philadelphia had outgrown New York. Of a certainty the spirit in which the city was founded, the sense of security, the co-operation of all men with their neighbors, brought the legitimate fruits of prosperity and astonishing development.

We have now sketched the planting of twelve out of the thirteen original colonies of the United States. It only remains to notice the founding of the thirteenth-GEORGIA. The reader will have noted how far forward we have been carried in following out the history of the colonial establishments. The two Carolinas, Pennsylvania and Georgia belong by the dates of their first planting to the second rather than the first period in our history; but the unity of the work is best preserved by classifying them with the rest.

As in the case of the Quaker State, the colony of Georgia was the product of a benevolent impulse. The English philanthropist, James Oglethorpe, struck with compassion at the miserable condition of the English poor, conceived the design of forming for them an asylum in America. The

chief abuse to which the poor of England were subjected was imprisonment for debt. Such was the law of the realm. Thousands of English laborers becoming indebted to the rich were annually arrested and thrown into jail. Their families were generally left to misery and starvation. This crime against humanity became so common and so terrible that a cry of the oppressed at last reached Parliament. In 1728 James Oglethorpe was appointed at his own request to look into the condition of the English poor and to report measures of relief. He performed his duty in a manner so creditable that the debtor jails were opened and the poor victims of poverty set free to return to their families.

The condition, however, of the classes thus liberated was pitiable in the extreme. The emancipated prisoners were disheartened and disgraced. It was with the purpose of furnishing a refuge and an asylum for this class of sufferers that Oglethorpe appealed to King George II. for the privilege of granting a colony in America. The petition was fortunately not made in vain. On the 9th of June, 1732, a royal charter was issued, by which the territory between the Savannah and Altamaha Rivers and westward to the Pacific was granted to a corporation for twenty-one years, to be held in trust for the poor. In honor of the King, the new province was called Georgia.

The character of the founder was such as to attract sympathy and confidence to his enterprise. Oglethorpe was a loyalist by birth and an Oxford man by education. He was a high-churchman, a cavalier, a soldier, a member of Parliament. In his personal character he was benevolent, generous, sympathetic, brave as John Smith, chivalrous as De Soto. With his accustomed magnanimity he undertook in person the leadership of the first colony to be planted on the Savannah.

During the summer and autumn Oglethorpe collected a

colony of a hundred and twenty persons. The emigrant ships left England in November and reached Charleston in January of 1733. After some explorations the high bluff on which the city of Savannah now stands was selected as the site of the settlement. Here, on the 1st of February, were laid the foundations of the oldest English town south of the Savannah River. Broad streets were laid out, public squares were reserved, and a beautiful village of tents and board houses soon appeared among the pine trees as the capital of a new commonwealth in which men should not be imprisoned for debt.

The settlement flourished and grew. In 1736 a second considerable company of immigrants arrived. Part of these were Moravians, a people of deep piety and fervent spirit. First and most zealous among them was the celebrated John Wesley, founder of Methodism. He came not as a politician, not as a minister merely, but as an apostle to the New World. Such was his own thought of his mission. His idea was to spread the gospel, to convert the Indians, and to introduce a new type of religion, characterized by few forms and much emotion. His brother Charles, the poet, was a timid and tender-hearted man, who was chosen by the governor as his secretary. Two years afterwards came the famous George Whitefield, whose robust and daring nature proved equal to the hardships of the wilderness. These men became the evangelists of those new forms of religious faith and practice which were destined after the Revolution to gain so firm a footing and exercise so wide an influence among the American people.

CHAPTER VI.

THE reader will not have forgotten the circumstances of the founding of the oldest American colony on the River James. At the first the settlement was badly managed, but the fortune of the colonists was at length restored by the valor, industry and enterprise of their remarkable leader, Captain John Smith. The other members of the corporation showed little capacity for government, and some of the foremost men were not only incompetent, but dishonest. Under Captain Smith's direction, however, Jamestown soon began to show signs of vitality and progress. The first settlers were afflicted with the diseases peculiar to their situation. Captain Smith adopted such improvements in building and food-supply that the health of the settlers was measurably restored. His own confidence was diffused in those who lacked, and the project of abandoning the settlement was at length given over.

As soon as practicable, Captain Smith entered upon that series of explorations and adventures which in the aggre. gate has converted his life into a romance. We find him now in the Chesapeake, making a map of that broad and important water, naming its tributaries. Now he is a prisoner among the Indians during the greater part of the winter, and escaping from captivity through the intercession of chief Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas, who threw herself between the prostrate body of Smith and the uplifted club of the executioner, but wandering back to the settlement only to find the colony wasted away to thirty

eight persons. At the very crisis of distress, however, Captain Newport returned from England with a cargo of supplies and a new company of immigrants.

For two years John Smith was in the ascendant and the colony was shaped in its destinies by his masterly hand. In 1609, however, while sleeping in a boat on the James, he was wounded by the explosion of a bag of gunpowder.. His flesh was torn in a horrible manner and in his agony he jumped overboard. For some time he lay in the tortures of fever and great suffering from his wound. At length he determined to seek for medical and surgical aid in England. He accordingly delegated his authority to Sir George Percy, and in the autumn of 1609 left the scenes of his toils and sufferings never to return.

His loss was soon seriously felt in the colony. The first settlers had been an improvident folk, little disposed to labor and economy. The winter of 1609-10 was known as the starving-time. The settlers were reduced to great want, and in the following spring it was determined to abandon Jamestown and return to England. The embarkation was actually effected; but before the settlers had passed out of the mouth of the James the ships of Lord Delaware came in sight with many additional emigrants and abundant stores. The colonists reluctantly gave up their design and returned to their abandoned houses.

Lord Delaware was succeeded in the government of Virginia by Sir Thomas Dale, and he in turn by Sir Thomas Gates. The latter held office until 1614, when Dale was recalled, and Gates returned to England. In 1617 Samuel Argall was chosen governor and entered upon an admnistration noted rather for fraud and oppression than for wise and humane policy. For two years he remained in authority, until the discontent of the colonists led to his recall and the appointment of Sir George Yeardley in his stead.