Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/23

Rh The first and only attempt it ever made at settling emigrants was carried out in 1709 and 1710, when, out of about 15,000 Protestant Swabians and Palatines, it sent at its own expense about 3,000 to New York. These poor people, as stated above, were driven from their homes by war, famine, and religious persecution, and now threw themselves in endless numbers upon the sympathies of England. While others of these exiles were sent to Ireland and North Carolina, Governor Hunter settled the above 3,000 on the Hudson River, where he proposed to employ them making naval stores. But the experiment failed in consequence of the narrow-mindedness of the colonial officers, the sharp practices of a Scotch speculator, and of the misapprehension of the conditions of an emigrant's success—first among which is freedom of action and of movement. The English Government wanted subjects and servants; the emigrants wanted to become free and independent. Hence first the irrepressible conflict, and finally the victory of the immigrants.

All who thenceforth emigrated came on their own account. Thus the Scotch, under Captain Campbell, who settled near Lake George (1740); the Baden farmers, who, in the middle of the eighteenth century, founded New Durlach, the present Sharon in Schoharie County; thus the Germans, who settled in the Mohawk Valley, and the immigrants who were imported in 1793 and 1794: by the Genesee Association. During the whole of the last century, the immigration of from eighty to one hundred families, in a body, was an event of great and general interest. The ships, which arrived at intervals, seldom had more than a hundred or one hundred and fifty passengers on board. New York had only a secondary importance, and attracted fewer immigrants than Pennsylvania, because they were better treated in the Quaker State. For this reason, Philadelphia had regular communications with Holland and England, and, as an immigrant port, ranked far above New York.

But in Philadelphia, as well as in New York, the great majority of immigrants were very poor people, so poor that they could not pay their passage, and in order to meet the obligations incurred by them for passage-money and other advances, they were sold, after their arrival, into temporary servitude. During all the