Although disturbed by wars with the French and Indians, by domestic political quarrels, and by disputes with the mother country regarding the regulation of commerce and manufactures, there was a steady growth of population in British North America during the first half of the seventeenth century. The rewards of industry were sufficient, coupled with considerable religious and political freedom, to entice a continuous, though fluctuating, immigration from England and the continent of Europe. In New England, where the English stock was practically unmixed with foreign blood, the rate of progress was less pronounced than in Pennsylvania and the South, which were largely recruited from other races. In 1700, the population of New England was something, over one hundred and five thousand. By the beginning of the French and Indian War (1754) it was a little less than four hundred thousand, New Hampshire having forty thousand, Massachusetts and Maine two hundred thousand, Rhode Island forty thousand, and Connecticut a hundred and ten thousand. The middle colonies commenced the century with fifty-nine thousand; but by 1750 this had, chiefly owing to the exceptionally rapid growth of Pennsylvania after 1730, increased to three hundred and fifty-five thousand, of which New York contained ninety thousand, New Jersey eighty thousand, and Pennsylvania and Delaware one hundred and eighty-five thousand. In the Southern group there was a population of eighty-nine thousand in 1700, which had grown to six hundred and twenty-five thousand in 1763, not counting Georgia, settled in 1733, which in twenty years had acquired a population of five thousand; Maryland had a hundred and fifty-four thousand, chiefly Englishmen, but there was a liberal admixture of Germans and people of other nationalities. Virginia had nearly three hundred thousand, of whom the blacks were now in the majority. North Carolina, important in numbers only, had ninety thousand, of whom twenty per cent were slaves; South Carolina had eighty thousand, the blacks outnumbering the whites by two or three to one. The total for the thirteen colonies in 1750 is about thirteen hundred and seventy thousand. 120. Attacks on the Charters (1701-1749). Sidenote: Attack on the New England charters.