The first forty-odd years of our national life are included in the second of the five periods which have been distinguished. During this period no accurate statistics were kept of the arrival of immigrants. The federal government took no control of the matter whatever, and the records of the states, taken mainly at the customhouses, were fragmentary and unreliable. Consequently there is no certainty as to the number or source of the arrivals during these years, and we are forced to rely on estimates. The best known are those of Seybert and Blodgett, which are generally taken as the basis of other estimates. The Bureau of Statistics in its pamphlet on “Immigration into the United States” (1903) says, “The best estimates of the total immigration into the United States prior to the official count puts [sic] the total number of arrivals at not to exceed 250,000 in the entire period between 1776 and 1820” (p. 4336). In an unpublished study of this question Mr. J. L. Leonard of Yale University finds this estimate probably too small, and thinks that the figure 345,000 would come nearer to representing the total number of immigrants from 1784 to 1810. One thing is certain, however, that immigration during this period was far from being a burning issue, or from attracting any great amount of attention. An average of ten thousand arrivals a year was not a matter of great importance, and the young nation had enough more weighty matters to engage her attention to prevent her devoting much thought to immigration. It is true that the need of an increasing population was still felt, as it had been during colonial days, but the native population was multiplying at an extraordinary rate (doubling about every twenty-two years) and seemed thoroughly capable of supplying the entire need. Yet we find occasional references to the matter in the contemporary literature, and the subject was evidently one which frequently came up for discussion. In general, foreigners were not regarded as such desirable citizens as natives, and it was considered unwise to give newcomers too much power or responsibility in the government.[50] Benjamin Franklin, writing in the _American Museum_ for the year 1787, stated that the only encouragements which this government holds out to strangers are such as are derived from good laws and liberty. “Strangers are welcome, because there is room enough for them all, and therefore the old inhabitants are not jealous of them.... One or two years’ residence give him [the immigrant] all the rights of a citizen; but the government does not at present, whatever it may have done in former times, hire people to become settlers, by paying their passage, giving land, negroes, utensils, stock, or any other kind of emolument whatsoever.”[51]