their boast until the colonists wrote these rights and privileges into
a constitution of their own. "Foreigners" began early to straggle into
the colonies. But not until the eighteenth century was well under way
did they come in appreciable numbers, and even then the great bulk of
these non-English newcomers were from the British Isles--of Welsh,
Scotch, Irish, and Scotch-Irish extraction.

These colonies took root at a time when profound social and religious
changes were occurring in England. Churchmen and dissenters were at
war with each other; autocracy was struggling to survive the
representative system; and agrarianism was contending with a newly
created capitalism for economic supremacy. The old order was changing.
In vain were attempts made to stay progress by labor laws and poor
laws and corn laws. The laws rather served to fill the highways with
vagrants, vagabonds, mendicants, beggars, and worse. There was a
general belief that the country was overpopulated. For the restive,
the discontented, the ambitious, as well as for the undesirable
surplus, the new colonies across the Atlantic provided a welcome
outlet.

To the southern plantations were lured those to whom land-owning
offered not only a means of livelihood but social distinction. As word
was brought back of the prosperity of the great estates and of the
limitless areas awaiting cultivation, it tempted in substantial
numbers those who were dissatisfied with their lot: the yeoman who saw
no escape from the limitations of his class, either for himself or for
his children; the younger son who disdained trade but was too poor to
keep up family pretensions; professional men, lawyers, and doctors,
even clergymen, who were ambitious to become landed gentlemen; all
these felt the irresistible call of the New World.