consider whether it would be possible for them to arrange for the many and great expenses of the passage.”
Some did not need help, and could supply from their
own means what was required; but on the 20th the
committee learned that forty-five more needy ones had started
from the Palatinate. These with eight others cost the
Society 3271f. 15st. Before the end of July twenty-one
more came to Rotterdam, and so it continued. No
wonder that the committee, concerned about such an
outpouring, requested the community in Pennsylvania “to
announce emphatically to all the people from the pulpit
that they must no more advise their needy friends and
acquaintances to come out of the Palatinate, and should
encourage them with the promise that, if they only
remained accross the sea, they would be liberally provided
for in everything.” If, however, they added, the
Pennsylvanians wanted to pay for the passage of the poor
Palatines, it would then of course be their own affair.
This the Pennsylvanians were not ready nor in a condition
to do. The committee also sent forbidding letter
after letter to the Palatinate, but every year they had to
be repeated, and sometimes, as, for instance, May 6th,
1733, they drew frightful pictures: “We learn from New
York that a ship from Rotterdam going to Pennsylvania
with one hundred and fifty Palatines wandered twenty-four
weeks at sea. When they finally arrived at port
nearly all the people were deal. The rest, through the
want of vivres, were forced to subsist upon rats and vermin,
and are all sick and weak. The danger of such an
occurrence is always so great that the most heedless do not run
the risk except through extreme want.” Nevertheless
the stream of emigrants did not cease. When finally
over three thousand of different sects came to Rotterdam,
the committee, June 15th, 1732, adopted the strong reso-
