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 Great Britain refused to commission a minister to her former colonies for nearly ten years after their independence had been recognized.
* Quoted by W.E.Lingelbach, "History Teacher's Magazine," March, 1913.
It is usually thought that the dregs of humiliation have been reached when the rights of foreigners are not considered safe in a particular country, so that another state insists upon establishing therein its own tribunal for the trial of its citizens or subjects.

Yet that is what the French insisted upon in the United States, and they were supposed to be especially friendly.