Page:Historical and biographical sketches.djvu/185

Rh land.” Naturally the Rotterdamers asked that money be furnished for the journey and support of the emigrants. But the committee, who considered the matter “useless and entirely unadvisable,” refused to dispose in this way of the funds entrusted to them. It was the first refusal of the kind, and little did the committee think that for twenty-four years they must keep repeating it before such requests should entirely cease. It would in fact have been otherwise if they had begun with the rule which they finally adopted in 1732, or if the determination they expressed in letter after letter had been followed by like action, and they had not let themselves be persuaded away from it continually — sometimes from perplexity, but oftener from pity. The Palatines understood the situation well. If they could only reach Holland without troubling themselves about the letters, if they were only urgent and persevering, the committee would end by helping them on their way to Pennsylvania. The emigrants of April, 1709, accomplished their objects though as it appears through the assistance of others. At all events, I think, they are the ones referred to by Jacob Telner, a Netherlander Mennonite dwelling at London, who wrote, August 6th, to Amsterdam and Haarlem: “Eight families went to Pennsylvania; the English Friends, who are called Quakers, helped them liberally.” His letter speaks of others who also wanted to follow