The founders of the commonwealths of which I write were Englishmen. Their emigration to New England began in 1620. It was inconsiderable till 1630. At the end of ten years more, it almost ceased. A people, consisting at that time of not many more than twenty thousand persons, thenceforward multiplied on its own soil, in remarkable seclusion from other communities, for nearly a century and a half. Some slight emigrations from it took place at an early day; but they were soon discontinued; and it was not till the last quarter of the eighteenth century, that those swarms began to depart, which have since occupied so large a portion of the territory of the United States.