from the year 1619, or for one hundred and fifty-seven years previous to the American declaration of independence, as many convicts had been transported to America during that period as would have amounted to at least five hundred every year for a whole century previous to the American war, or to fifty thousand altogether.
It would seem that none of these convicts were ever transported to that part of the American territory called New England, comprising the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, and Rhode Island. The puritanical character and origin of the population of these provinces preclude such an idea. Indeed, we may estimate the feelings with which the virtuous New Englanders would have received any proposal of the kind, from a fact related by the Rev. Daniel Neale in his 'History of New England:' viz. that during the seventeenth century, a settler in one of the earlier settlements of Massachusetts or Connecticut having been found guilty of theft, was sentenced by the General Court (doubtless, following scriptural example and oriental practice) to have his house pulled down and made a dunghill, and to be sent back himself by the first convenient opportunity to England.
The American colonies, to which convicts were transported under the old system, were those of
