In 1733, Georgia was settled under the patronage of General Oglethorpe, of the British Army, and it was intended as a humanitarian scheme for furnishing refuge to impoverished meritorious persons, and persecuted Continental Protestants. The territory, together with the power to legislate for twenty-one years, was granted to trustees resident in England. The trustees at first prohibited the introduction of slaves, but under the humanitarian ideas with which the colony was begun, it languished and proved a miserable failure until the year 1749. The trustees were then induced to permit the introduction of slaves, at the instance, among others, of the celebrated preacher, Whitfield, and his follower, Habersham, who earnestly interceded for the permission--Habersham stating as a reason for the introduction of slavery that "Many of the poor slaves in America have already been made freemen of the Heavenly Jerusalem." Slavery was thus introduced into Georgia, and the Colony began at once to prosper and advanced with rapid strides. * * * * * The institution of slavery, it will thus be perceived, existed at the time of the Revolution, not only in all of the revolting colonies, acknowledged by law and sustained by public sentiment at home and in the mother country, but it existed in all of the territories, which afterwards became a part of the United States, and was sanctioned by the sentiment of all of the Christian world. But before this review of the slave trade and of slavery in the British colonies in North America, is closed, it is proper that England should receive credit for one incident in her judicial history in regard to the subject. In the year 1763, the celebrated case of Somerset, a slave who had been carried to England by his master from one of the British West India Islands, came up before Lord Mansfield in Westminster Hall on a writ of _habeas corpus_, and that distinguished Chief Justice of the King's Bench, in delivering his opinion discharging the petition, said: "The air of England has long been too pure for a slave, and every man who breathes it is free."