upon which this corporation was at first established; and looked upon
it as a provident act of charity to let necessitous persons have the
opportunity of borrowing money upon easier terms than they could have
it elsewhere. Money, like other things, is but a commodity, and in the
way of dealing, the use of it is looked upon to be worth as much as
people can get for it. If this corporation let persons in limited
circumstances have the use of money at a cheaper rate than
individuals, brokers, or money lenders, would be willing to do, it
was certainly a beneficent act. If they had demanded more than was
elsewhere given, they would not have had applicants, and the design
would not have proved good and useful; but the utility of it was
most evident; and the better the design, and the more excellent the
benefit, the more those persons deserve to be punished, who by their
frauds have curtailed, if not now wholly cut off, these sources
of furnishing assistance to the industrious and enterprising, and
disappointed the public of reaping the benefit which might
have accrued by an honest and faithful execution of so good an
undertaking."[1]
[Footnote 1: History and Proceedings of the House of Commons, Vol.
VII. p. 154.]
Another subject in the parliamentary discussions of Oglethorpe which I
shall mention, is his defence of the magistracy and town-guard of the
city of Edinburgh against an arraignment in the House of Lords, for
what was deemed the neglect of prompt and energetic measures for
suppressing the riotous seizure and murder of Captain Porteous by an
exasperated mob. The circumstances were these.
After the execution in the Grass-market, on the 14th of April, 1736,
of one Andrew Wilson, a robber, the town-guard, which had been ordered
out on the occasion, was insulted by rude and threatening speeches,
and pelted with stones, by the mob. John Porteous, the captain, so
resented the annoyance, that he commanded his men to fire over their
heads, to intimidate them; and then, as their opposition became
violent, he directed the guard to fire among them; whereby six persons
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