Other Nationalities.-Though the English,the Scotch-Irish,and the Ger-mans made up the bulk of the colonial population,there were other racial strains as well,varying in numerical importance but contributing their share to colonial life.
From France came the Huguenots fleeing from the decree of the king which inflicted terrible penalties upon Protestants.
From "Old Ireland"came thousands of native Irish,Celtic in race and Catholic in religion.Like their Scotch-Irish neighbors to the north,they revered neither the government nor the church of England imposed upon them by the sword.How many came we do not know,but shipping records of the colonial period show that boatload after boatload left the southern and eastern shores of Ireland for the New World.Undoubtedly thousands of their passengers were Irish of the native stock.This surmise is well sustained by the constant appearance of Celtic names in the records of various colonies.
The Jews,then as ever engaged in their age-long battle for religious and economic toleration,found in the American colonies,not complete liberty,but certainly more freedom than they enjoyed in England,France,Spain,or Portugal.The English law did not actually recognize their right to live in any of the dominions,but owing to the easy-going habits of the Americans they were allowed to filter into the seaboard towns.The treatment they received therevaried.On one occasion the mayor and council of New York forbade them to sell by retail and on another prohibited the exercise of their religious worship.Newport,Philadelphia,and Charleston were more hospitable,and there large Jewish colonies,consisting principally of merchants and their families,flourished in spite of nominal prohibitions of the law.
Old Dutch Fort and English Church Near AlbanyThough the small Swedish colony in Delaware was quickly submerged beneath the tide of English migration,the Dutch in New York continued to hold their own for more than a hundred years after the English conquest in 1664.At the end of the colonial period over one-half of the 170,000inhabitants of the province were descendants of the original Dutch-still distinct enough to give a decided cast to the life and manners of New York.Many of them clung as tenaciously to their mother tongue as they did to their capacious farmhouses or their Dutch ovens;but they were slowly losing their identity as the English pressed in beside them to farm and trade.
The melting pot had begun its historic mission.
The Process of Colonization
Considered from one side,colonization,whatever the motives of the emigrants,was an economic matter.It involved the use of capital to pay for their passage,to sustain them on the voyage,and to start them on the way of production.Under this stern economic necessity,Puritans,Scotch-Irish,Germans,and all were alike laid.
Immigrants Who Paid Their Own Way.-Many of the immigrants to Amer-ica in colonial days were capitalists themselves,in a small or a large way,and paid their own passage.What proportion of the colonists were able to finance their voyage across the sea is a matter of pure conjecture.Undoubtedly a very considerable number could do so,for we can trace the family fortunes of many early settlers.Henry Cabot Lodge is authority for the statement that "the set-tlers of New England were drawn from the country gentlemen,small farmers,and yeomanry of the mother country....Many of the emigrants were men of wealth,as the old lists show,and all of them,with few exceptions,were men of property and good standing.They did not belong to the classes from which emigration is usually supplied,for they all had a stake in the country they leftbehind."Though it would be interesting to know how accurate this statement is or how applicable to the other colonies,no study has as yet been made to gratify that interest.For the present it is an unsolved problem just how many of the colonists were able to bear the cost of their own transfer to the New World.
Indentured Servants.-That at least tens of thousands of immigrants were unable to pay for their passage is established beyond the shadow of a doubt by the shipping records that have come down to us.The great barrier in the way of the poor who wanted to go to America was the cost of the sea voyage.To over-come this difficulty a plan was worked out whereby shipowners and other per-sons of means furnished the passage money to immigrants in return for their promise,or bond,to work for a term of years to repay the sum advanced.This system was called indentured servitude.
It is probable that the number of bond servants exceeded the original twenty thousand Puritans,the yeomen,the Virginia gentlemen,and the Huguenots combined.All the way down the coast from Massachusetts to Georgia were to be found in the fields,kitchens,and workshops,men,women,and children serving out terms of bondage generally ranging from five to seven years.In the proprietary colonies the proportion of bond servants was very high.The Baltimores,Penns,Carterets,and other promoters anxiously sought for workers of every nationality to till their fields,for land without labor was worth no more than land in the moon.Hence the gates of the proprietary colonies were flung wide open.Every inducement was offered to immigrants in the form of cheap land,and special efforts were made to increase the population by importing servants.In Pennsylvania,it was not uncommon to find a master with fifty bond servants on his estate.It has been estimated that two-thirds of all the immigrants into Pennsylvania between the opening of the eighteenth century and the outbreak of the Revolution were in bondage.In the other Middle colonies the number was doubtless not so large;but it formed a considerable part of the population.