Benjamin Franklin, who, in 1753, expressed his opinion of some of his fellow citizens in a letter to Peter Collinson, was merely reflecting an attitude which the English stock had more or less generally taken when he declared:
"Those who come hither are generally the most stupid of their own nation, and, as ignorance is often attended with credulity when knavery would mislead it, and with suspicion when honesty would set it right; and as few of the English understand the German language, and so cannot address them either from the press or the pulpit, it is almost impossible to remove any prejudices they may entertain. Their clergy have very little influence on the people, who seem to take a pleasure in abusing and discharging the minister on every trivial occasion. Not being used to liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it. And as Holben says of the young Hottentots, that they are not esteemed men until they have shown their manhood by beating their mothers, so these seem not to think themselves free, till they can feel their liberty in abusing and insulting their teachers. Thus they are under no restraint from ecclesiastical government; they behave, however, submissively enough at present to the civil government, which I wish they may continue to do, for I remember when they modestly declined intermeddling in our elections, but now they come in droves and carry all before them, except in one or two counties.[7]
"Few of their children in the country know English. They import many books from Germany; and of the six printing-houses in the province, two are entirely German, two half German, half English, and but two entirely English. They have one German newspaper, and one half-German. Advertisements, intended to be general, are now printed in Dutch and English. The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages, and in some places only German. They begin of late to make all their bonds and other legal instruments in their own language, which (though I think it ought not to be) are allowed in our courts, where the German business so increases that there is continued need of interpreters; and I suppose in a few years they will also be necessary in the Assembly, to tell one-half our legislators what the other half say.
"In short, unless the stream of their importation could be turned from this to other colonies, as you very judiciously propose, they will soon so outnumber us that we will, in my opinion, be not able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious. The French, who watch all advantages, are now themselves making a German settlement, back of us, in the Illinois country, and by means of these Germans they may in time come to an understanding with ours; and, indeed, in the last war,[8] our Germans showed a general disposition, that seemed to bode us no good. For, when the English, who were not Quakers, alarmed by the danger arising from the defenseless state of our country, entered unanimously into an association, and within this government, and the Lower Counties raised, armed, and disciplined near ten thousand men, the Germans, except a very few in proportion to their number, refused to engage in it, giving out, one amongst another, and even in print, that, if they were quiet, the French, should they take the country, would not molest them; at the time abusing the Philadelphians for fitting out privateers against the enemy, and representing the trouble, hazard, and expense of defending the province, as a greater inconvenience than any that might be expected from a change of government. Yet I am not for refusing to admit them entirely into our colonies. All that seems to me necessary is, to distribute them more equally, mix them with the English schools, where they are not too thickly settled, and take some care to prevent the practice, lately fallen into by some of the shipowners, of sweeping the German gaols to make up the number of their passengers. I say I am not against the admission of Germans in general, for they have their virtues. Their industry and frugality are exemplary. They are excellent husbandmen, and contribute greatly to the improvement of a country."
By 1727, the English in Pennsylvania had become sufficiently alarmed over the proportions of the Palatine invasion to demand a careful record of the numbers arriving each year so that from then on there is full official record of all foreigners entered at the port of Philadelphia. By that time there were probably fifteen or twenty thousand Germans already in the province, and the record mentioned indicates that between 1727 and 1745 approximately 22,000 arrived by ships. To this number should, of course, be added the high natural increase of those already settled.
Since the English had pre-empted much of the desirable land along the Delaware and around Philadelphia, the Germans, with whom the acquisition of farming land was a dominant passion, mostly went westward of the English settlement and formed a belt where their language was and, in scattered groups to this day, is spoken. They filled the Lehigh and Schuylkill valleys and occupied a band of fertile soil beginning in eastern Pennsylvania on the Delaware, passing westward toward the Susquehanna through the towns of Allentown, Reading, Lebanon, Lancaster, and thence down to the Cumberland valley on the Maryland border where they had a natural outlet to western Virginia and to the south. The tier of counties north of this belt and along the borders of New York was comparatively neglected by them, and was filled largely by settlers from Connecticut. The influx of English and German sectaries was so rapid that within three years from its founding, Penn's province had made a growth as great as that of New Netherlands in its first half-century.
The early Quakers who belonged to the privileged group grew prosperous, and many of them finding the strict ordinances of their sect somewhat oppressive became Anglicans. Thus the Church of England gained an important position in Philadelphia which it retained up to the Revolution. In general, it represented the Loyalist element and therefore partly disintegrated when they left at the end of the war. The Revolution was largely Calvinistic, and the Established Church was in most of the northern colonies regarded with disfavor as "loyalist."
The invasion of Ulster Scots into Pennsylvania began shortly after the German immigration was well under way. Within a few years the great majority of the Ulster immigrants to America were making directly for the Delaware shores. Presbyterian congregations existed in the important towns of the colony about 1700, and within the next decade the Scotch had made numerous settlements in New Castle County, Delaware, and on both sides of the Pennsylvania-Maryland boundary at its intersection with the Delaware line.
When the great tide of emigration from Ulster set in about 1720, the Scotch found the best and most accessible soil in Pennsylvania occupied by the English and the next belt held firmly by the Germans. In general, therefore, they were obliged to pass over these two territories and settle still farther west, particularly in the Cumberland valley of which Gettysburg, York, and Carlisle are now important centers. In this district geographical isolation led later to the establishment farther south of a distinct church, the Cumberland Presbyterian, somewhat different in its tenets from the Presbyterianism of the Philadelphia region and Delaware.
The number of Scotch who thus left Ulster for Pennsylvania is uncertain, but may have exceeded 40,000 or 50,000. Taken in connection with the Palatine immigration at the same period the influx to Pennsylvania in the 1730's formed the largest migration from Europe to the New World that ever took place until the steamship era arrived.
