From COLLECTIONS OF THE Georgia Historical Society, Vol. VII. ADDRESS OF HON. WALTER G. CHARLTON. "The England of 1729 took no heed of what fate might befall the insolvent debtor. Misfortune and misery excited its mirth; and compassion like some feeble growth slightrooted in arid soil, sent its weak and nerveless tendrils here and there in fitful and uncertain ways toward what might prove support. The man and the evil stood face to face, and singly and alone, as in the tales Where moved the knights-errant of the age of poesy, he gave fight until the sheer gallantry of the spectacle began to make a responsive thrill, and gather to him, one by one, the kindred spirits which, few in number, but worthy of the cause in which they fought, stood with him until the glorious end became a conclusion never to be undone in the history of man. His chivalrous heart, full of indignant pity for the sorrows upon which he looked, Oglethorpe introduced into parliament a resolution of inquiry into the conditions of the debtors' prisons. The investigation which followed revealed, in the language of an historian of that epoch, 'infamous jobbery and more infamous cruelty on the part of prison officials.' With the report came the opportunity without which the greatness of individuals means nothing.