The English Government was not dissatisfied with an emigration which removed the elements of fresh discord and of further revolutions.

On the contrary, everything was done to encourage it, and great exertions were made to mitigate the hardships of those who sought a shelter from the rigor of their country's laws on the soil of America.

It seemed as if New England was a region given up to the dreams of fancy and the unrestrained experiments of innovators.
The English colonies (and this is one of the main causes of their prosperity) have always enjoyed more internal freedom and more political independence than the colonies of other nations; but this principle of liberty was nowhere more extensively applied than in the States of New England.
It was generally allowed at that period that the territories of the New World belonged to that European nation which had been the first to discover them.

Nearly the whole coast of North America thus became a British possession towards the end of the sixteenth century.

The means used by the English Government to people these new domains were of several kinds; the King sometimes appointed a governor of his own choice, who ruled a portion of the New World in the name and under the immediate orders of the Crown; *j this is the colonial system adopted by other countries of Europe.