ary flow of companies of individual emigrants
seeking to better the fortunes of themselves or their families. But this
voluntary migration has been unhealthily and sometimes dishonestly
stimulated, from the beginning of it, by the selfish interests of those
concerned in the business of transportation or in the sale of land. It
seems to have been mainly the greed of shipping merchants, at first,
that spread abroad in the German states florid announcements of the
charms and riches of America, decoying multitudes of ignorant persons to
risk everything on these representations, and to mortgage themselves
into a term of slavery until they should have paid the cost of their
passage by their labor. This class of bondmen, called "redemptioners,"
made no inconsiderable part of the population of the middle colonies;
and it seems to have been a worthy part. The trade of "trepanning" the
unfortunates and transporting them and selling their term of service was
not by several degrees as bad as the African slave-trade; but it was of
the same sort, and the deadly horrors of its "middle passage" were
hardly less.

In one way and another the German immigration had grown by the middle of
the eighteenth century to great dimensions. In the year 1749 twelve
thousand Germans landed at the port of Philadelphia. In general they
were as sheep having no shepherd. Their deplorable religious condition
was owing less to poverty than to diversity of sects.[188:1] In many
places the number of sects rendered concerted action impossible, and the
people remained destitute of religious instruction.

The famine of the word was sorely felt. In 1733 three great Lutheran
congregations in Pennsylvania, numbering five hundred families each,
sent messengers with an imploring petition to their coreligionists at
London and Halle, representing their "state of the greatest
destitution." "Our own means" (they say) "are utterly insufficient to
effect the necessary relief, unless God in his mercy may send us help
from abroad. It is truly lamentable to think of the large numbers of the
rising generation who know not their right hand from their left; and,
unless help be promptly afforded, the danger is great that, in
consequence of the great lack of churches and schools, the most of them
will be led into the ways of destructive error."

This urgent appeal bore fruit like the apples of Sodom. It resulted in a
painful and pitiable correspondence with the chiefs of the mo