"The appearance of pirates on the coasts of America was coeval with the earliest settlements in the new world, and to secure a complete view of their history, we have to refer to conditions which existed far back in the middle of the sixteenth century. But these piracies are not to be considered as a apart of those which enter so largely into the commercial history of the North American colonies, or those of the South o which we propose to speak more particularly. At that time the English colonies had not yet been planted, and it was from the founding of these that the occurrences of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which had to great an effect on commerce, date. Many of the earliest settlers were adventurers, not in the then honorable meaning of that term, but in the strictest latter-day disreputable sense. The countries of Europe when anxious to rid themselves of turbulent elements, offered special inducements to the objectionable individuals to emigrate. By England in particular was this custom practiced, and the better classes in the colonies frequently complained of the unloading of the refuse population of the mother-country on their shores. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that bold, bad men with criminal propensities, if not genuine outlaws, flocked to America as a field in which they could indulge their evil adventures with comparatively little interruption, and it was this class that fostered the spirit which soon broke forth in all kinds of crime and lawlessness."