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3 LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF THE BACHELOR By 1730 Great Britain had planted more than a dozen colonies on mainland North America and scattered many more among the islands of the West Indies. Yet in the opinion of one particularly vociferous member of Parliament, it was not too late for the king to carve one more settlement out of the wilderness. James Edward Oglethorpe envisioned a colony unlike any other, a colony where those Britons who had been jailed for debt could start anew. Oglethorpe’s idea would eventually gain royal approval, and in February 1733 he led the first group of settlers to the province of Georgia. Before this happened, Oglethorpe drafted a statement of his goals and the potential benefits of the new colony. The treatise stated emphatically that success in Georgia would be contingent on the immigration of married men and the exclusion of bachelors. Oglethorpe began with a review of history, specifically the lessons learned from previous colonies. The ancient Greeks illustrated how colonization opened up opportunities for those who went abroad as well as those who stayed home. “Waves embarked with their Wives and Familys,” he noted of the Phoenicians, adding “the vacancys made by those who went off gave room for others to marry and beget Children.” Consequently, the population of the colony and the motherland grew, bringing riches and power to both. Oglethorpe also considered recent French colonies , holding them up as an example of the failures that resulted from not promoting family life in the New World. He chided King Louis XIV for abandoning France’s “old Soldiers” and speculated what might have happened had the monarch given his legions “leave to marry and Land to support their Familys in his new Conquests.” Instead of an empty Canada, “it is demonstrable that from the many thousand Invalids who by a forced celibacy died Childless in the beginning of his Literary Representations of the Bachelor 85 Reign might have proceeded Children sufficient to have formed mighty Armys in the latter end of it.” Oglethorpe applied these lessons to his plans for a new colony. Britain’s prisons were bursting with poor debtors and such senseless incarceration was destroying families. “Want first reduces them to Sickness or to Prison,” he wrote, “and when the Mans industry is useless the Wife and wretched Children must either perish or ask relief of their Parish.” This suffering could be alleviated by sending married men and their families to the New World. Such a plan broke with the tradition of populating new settlements with bachelors. Single men had no familial responsibilities and were thus free to be idle and rebellious, qualities that could endanger a colony. On the other hand, men with families would ensure stability. “The first Colony should consist not of single Men but of Familys,” Oglethorpe proclaimed, as “a Wife and Children are security for a Mans not abandoning the Settlement; and the presence of those dear pledges who will reap the advantage of it will the more strongly incite him to labour.” With “laborious and honest people” working to support their families, Georgia’s settlers “would not be apt to mutiny, since that would be destroying the end they aim at.” Oglethorpe then laid out a series of policies that would encourage the immigration of married men. The colony’s trustees would provide clothing for wives and children. Those men who made it to America with families “shall during the time of their 3 Childrens being alive at once be exempted from the Rent of labour.” To be sure, the trustees would have to be diligent in selecting immigrants because the proper male colonist would be “answerable for the behaviour of his Wife, Children and Servants.” Such efforts might delay settlement but selectivity was paramount. The wheat had to be “whinnowed from the Chaff.” It was “infinitely better to lose expence some Weeks than to carry over a mutinous or effeminate fellow.” Once the venture had taken off, other measures would keep the bachelor population to a minimum . Land in Georgia was readily available and “as soon as there are 24 men who have no Land a new Village or Lath will be set out.” Consequently, “no Man who is out of his Apprenticeship will remain unmarried, and as Males and Females are born in equal numbers if all the Men have Wives there can be no Woman without a Husband.” Family life was also to be supported by legal strictures...

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