estimable and excellent people who had come to British North
America inspired by the best of motives, there had come others
who were not regarded favorably by the governing classes of
Europe. Discontent is frequently a healthful sign and a
forerunner of progress, but it makes one an uncomfortable
neighbor in a satisfied and conservative community; and
discontent was the underlying factor in the migration from the
Old World to the New. In any composite immigrant population such
as that of the United States there was bound to be a large
element of undesirables. Among those who came "for conscience's
sake" were the best type of religious protestants, but there were
also religious cranks from many countries, of almost every
conceivable sect and of no sect at all. Many of the newcomers
were poor. It was common, too, to regard colonies as inferior
places of residence to which objectionable persons might be
encouraged to go and where the average of the population was
lowered by the influx of convicts and thousands of slaves.

"The great number of emigrants from Europe"--wrote Thieriot,
Saxon Commissioner of Commerce to America, from Philadelphia in
1784--"has filled this place with worthless persons to such a
degree that scarcely a day passes without theft, robbery, or even
assassination."* It would perhaps be too much to say that the
people of the United States were looked upon by the rest of the
world as only half civilized, but certainly they were regarded as
of lower social standing and of inferior quality, and many of
them were known to be rough, uncultured, and ignorant. Great
Britain and Germany maintained American missionary societies,
not, as might perhaps be expected, for the benefit of the Indian
or negro, but for the poor, benighted colonists themselves; and