[1653-1662 A.D.] trates be left to the rabble, every man will vote for one of his own stamp. The thief will vote for a thief; the smuggler for a smuggler; and fraud and vice will become privileged. (3) The old laws remain in force; directors will never make themselves responsible to subjects."

The delegates in their rejoinder (December 13th) appealed to the inalienable rights of nature. "We do but design the general good of the country and the maintenance of freedom; nature permits all men to constitute society, and assemble for the protection of liberty and property." Stuyvesant, having exhausted his arguments, could reply only by an act of power; and dissolving the assembly, he commanded its members to separate on pain of arbitrary punishment.1 "We derive our authority from God and the West India Company, not from the pleasure of a few ignorant subjects": such was his farewell message to the convention which he dispersed.

The West India Company declared this resistance to arbitrary taxation to be "contrary to the maxims of every enlightened government." "We approve the taxes you propose"-thus they wrote to Stuyvesant-"have no regard to the consent of the people"; "let them indulge no longer the visionary dream that taxes can be imposed only with their consent.' But the people continued to indulge the dream; taxes could not be collected; and the colonists, in their desire that popular freedom might prove more than a vision, listened with complacency to the hope of obtaining English liberties by submitting to English jurisdiction.

ENGLISH ENCROACHMENTS

Cromwell had planned the conquest of New Netherlands; in the days of his son, the design was revived; and the restoration of Charles II threatened New Netherlands with danger from the south, the north, and from England.

In previous negotiations with the agent of Lord Baltimore, the envoy of New Netherlands had, in 1659, firmly maintained the right of the Dutch to the southern bank of the Delaware, pleading purchase and colonisation before the patent to Lord Baltimore had been granted. On the restoration, Lord Baltimore renewed his claims to the country from New Castle to Cape Henlopen. The college of Nineteen of the West India Company was inflexible; conscious of its rights, it refused to surrender its possessions, and (September 1st, 1660) resolved "to defend them even to the spilling of blood." The jurisdiction of his country was maintained; and when young Baltimore, with his train, appeared at the mouth of the Brandywine, he was honoured as a guest; but the proprietary claims of his father were triumphantly resisted. The Dutch, and Swedes, and Finns kept the country safely for William Penn. At last, the West India Company, desiring a barrier against the English on the south, transferred the whole country on the Delaware to the city of Amsterdam (February and July, 1663).

With Virginia, during the protectorate, the most amicable relations had been confirmed by reciprocal courtesies. Even during the war of 1653, between England and Holland, friendly intercourse had continued. Equal rights in the colonial courts were reciprocally secured by treaty in 1659. But upon the restoration, the act of navigation, at first evaded, was soon enforced; and by degrees, Berkeley, whose brother coveted the soil of New Jersey, threatened hostility. Clouds gathered in the south.

['Baxter was deposed from the magistracy of Gravesend, and, when he attempted an insurrection, was imprisoned.]

[1662-1663 A.D.] In the north, affairs were still more lowering. Massachusetts did not relinquish its right to an indefinite extension of its territory to the west; and the people of Connecticut not only increased their pretensions on Long Island (October, 1662) but, regardless of the provisionary treaty, claimed West Chester, and were steadily advancing towards the Hudson. To stay these encroachments, Stuyvesant himself repaired to Boston (September, 1663), and entered his complaints to the convention of the United Colonies. But Massachusetts maintained a neutrality; the voyage was, on the part of the Dutch, a confession of weakness; and Connecticut inexorably demanded delay. An embassy to Hartford renewed the language of remonstrance with no better success. Did the Dutch assert their original grant from the states general? It was interpreted as conveying no more than a commercial privilege. Did they plead discovery, purchase from the natives, and long possession? It was replied that Connecticut, by its charter, extended to the Pacific. "Where, then," demanded the Dutch negotiators, "where is New Netherlands?" And the agents of Connecticut, with provoking indifference, replied, "We do not know."

These unavailing discussions were conducted during the horrors of a halfyear's war with the savages around Esopus (June-November, 1663). The rising village on the banks of that stream was laid waste; many of its inhabitants murdered or made captive; and it was only on the approach of winter that an armistice restored tranquillity. The colony had no friend but the Mohawks. "The Dutch," said the faithful warriors of the Five Nations, "are our brethren. With them we keep but one council fire; we are united by a covenant chain."

The contests with the natives, not less than with New England, displayed the feebleness of New Netherlands. The province had no popular freedom, and therefore had no public spirit. In New England there were no poor; in New Netherlands the poor were so numerous it was difficult to provide for their relief. The Puritans easily supported schools everywhere, and Latin schools in their villages; on Manhattan a Latin school lingered, with difficulty, through two years, and was discontinued. In New England the people, in the hour of danger, rose involuntarily and defended themselves; in the Dutch province, men were unwilling to go to the relief even of villages that were in danger from the Indians, and demanded protection from the company, which claimed to be their absolute sovereign.

The necessities of the times wrung from Stuyvesant the concession of an assembly (November 1st, 1663); the delegates of the villages would only appeal to the states general and to the West India Company for protection. But the states general had, as it were, invited aggression by abstaining from every public act which should pledge their honour to the defence of the province; and the West India Company was too penurious to risk its funds, where victory was so hazardous. A new and more full diet was held in April, 1664. Rumours of an intended invasion from England had reached the colony; and the popular representatives, having remonstrated against the want of all means of defence, and foreseeing the necessity of submitting to the English, demanded plainly of Stuyvesant, "If you cannot protect us, to whom shall we turn?" The governor, faithful to his trust, proposed the enlistment "of every third man, as had more than once been done in the fatherland." And thus Manhattan was left without defence; the people would not expose life for the West India Company; and the company would not risk bankruptcy for a colony which it valued chiefly as property. The established government could not but fall into contempt. In vain was the

[1663-1664 A.D.} libeller of the magistrates fastened to a stake with a bridle in his mouth. Stuyvesant confessed his fear of the colonists. "To ask aid of the English villages would be inviting the Trojan horse within our walls." "I have not time to tell how the company is cursed and scolded; the inhabitants declare that the Dutch have never had a right to the country." Half Long Island had revolted; the settlements on the Esopus wavered; the Connecticut men had purchased of the Indians all the seaboard as far as the North river. Such were the narratives of Stuyvesant to his employers.

THE ENGLISH CONQUEST; NEW AMSTERDAM BECOMES NEW YORK (1664 A.D.)

In the mean time the United Provinces could not distrust a war with England. No cause for war existed except English envy of the commercial glory and prosperity of Holland. In profound confidence of firm peace, the countrymen of Grotius were planning liberal councils; at home they designed an abandonment of the protective system and concessions to free trade; in the Mediterranean, their fleet, under De Ruyter, was preparing to suppress the piracies of the Barbary states, and punish the foes of Christendom and civilisation. And at that very time the English were engaging in a piratical expedition against the Dutch possessions on the coast of Guinea. The king had also, with equal indifference to the chartered rights of Connecticut, and the claims of the Netherlands, granted to the duke of York (March 12th, 1664), not only the country from the Kennebec to the St. Croix, but the whole territory from the Connecticut river to the shores of the Delaware; and under the conduct of Richard Nichols, groom of the bedchamber to the duke of York, the English squadron, which carried the commissioners for New England to Boston, having demanded recruits in Massachusetts, and received on board the governor of Connecticut, approached the narrows, and quietly cast anchor in Gravesend bay (August 28th). Long Island was lost; soldiers from New England pitched their camp near Breukelen ferry.

In New Amsterdam there existed a division of councils. Stuyvesant, faithful to his employers, struggled to maintain their interests; the municipality, conscious that the town was at the mercy of the English fleet, desired to avoid bloodshed by a surrender. A joint committee from the governor and the city having demanded of Nichols the cause of his presence, he replied by requiring of Stuyvesant the immediate acknowledgment of English sovereignty, with the condition of security to the inhabitants in life, liberty, and property. At the same time, Winthrop of Connecticut, whose love of peace and candid affection for the Dutch nation had been acknowledged by the West India Company, advised his personal friends to offer no resistance. "The surrender," Stuyvesant nobly answered, "would be reproved in the fatherland." The burgomasters, unable to obtain a copy of the letter from Nichols, summoned, not a town meeting-that had been inconsistent with the manners of the Dutch-but the principal inhabitants to the public hall, where it was resolved that the community ought to know all that related to its welfare.

On a more urgent demand for the letter from the English commander, Stuyvesant angrily tore it in pieces; and the burgomasters, instead of resisting the invasion, spent their time in framing a protest against the governor. On the next day (September 3rd) a new deputation repaired to the fleet; but Nichols declined discussion. "When may we visit you again?" said the commissioners. "On Thursday," replied Nichols; "for to-morrow I will speak

[1664-1672 A.D.] with you at Manhattan." "Friends," it was smoothly answered, "are very welcome there." "Raise the white flag of peace," said the English commander, "for I shall come with ships of war and soldiers." The commissioners returned to advocate the capitulation, which was quietly effected on the following days. The aristocratic liberties of Holland yielded to the hope of popular liberties like those of New England.9

It was with bitter regret that the old soldier Stuyvesant was persuaded not to resist the English, by a remonstrance signed by ninety-three prominent citizens, including his own son, and enforced by the tears of women and children. "Let it be so," he said; "I had rather be carried to my grave." Fiskeb says that no canon of morality can justify Charles II in this conquest, and that it merited the revenge of the Dutch when in their next war they burned the English fleet at Chatham and blockaded the Thames-"the sorest military humiliation that England has ever known since William the Norman landed in Sussex."

After the surrender, Stuyvesant went to Holland to justify himself, and received the most cordial support from the people he had governed with fairness in everything except regard for popular liberty, which he abhorred.

He returned to New York in 1667 and dwelt in his bowery, bounded by the present Fourth avenue, Sixth and Seventeenth streets, and the East river. He and the English governor, Nichols, were great friends. Stuyvesant died in 1672, aged eighty, and is buried in St. Mark's church, founded by his widow in 1687.a

The articles of surrender, framed under the auspices of the municipal authority, by the mediation of the younger Winthrop and Pynchon, accepted by the magistrates and other inhabitants assembled in the town hall (September 8th) and not ratified by Stuyvesant till the surrender had virtually been made, promised security to the customs, the religion, the municipal institutions, the possessions of the Dutch. The enforcement of the Navigation Act was delayed for six months. During that period direct intercourse with Holland remained free. The towns were still to choose their own magistrates, and Manhattan, now first known as New York, to elect its deputies with free voices in all public affairs.1

[At the treaty of July, 1667, the Dutch were allowed, as compensation for New Netherlands, to retain the colony of Surinam, in Guiana, then lately planted by some English adventurers, but captured by the Dutch during the war-an exchange the policy of which was doubted by many, who thought colonies within the tropics more profitable than plantations in North America. For the first hundred years Surinam kept pretty equal pace with

[1663-1664 A.D.] libeller of the magistrates fastened to a stake with a bridle in his mouth. Stuyvesant confessed his fear of the colonists. "To ask aid of the English villages would be inviting the Trojan horse within our walls." "I have not time to tell how the company is cursed and scolded; the inhabitants declare that the Dutch have never had a right to the country." Half Long Island had revolted; the settlements on the Esopus wavered; the Connecticut men had purchased of the Indians all the seaboard as far as the North river. Such were the narratives of Stuyvesant to his employers.

THE ENGLISH CONQUEST; NEW AMSTERDAM BECOMES NEW YORK (1664 A.D.)

In the mean time the United Provinces could not distrust a war with England. No cause for war existed except English envy of the commercial glory and prosperity of Holland. In profound confidence of firm peace, the countrymen of Grotius were planning liberal councils; at home they designed an abandonment of the protective system and concessions to free trade; in the Mediterranean, their fleet, under De Ruyter, was preparing to suppress the piracies of the Barbary states, and punish the foes of Christendom and civilisation. And at that very time the English were engaging in a piratical expedition against the Dutch possessions on the coast of Guinea. The king had also, with equal indifference to the chartered rights of Connecticut, and the claims of the Netherlands, granted to the duke of York (March 12th, 1664), not only the country from the Kennebec to the St. Croix, but the whole territory from the Connecticut river to the shores of the Delaware; and under the conduct of Richard Nichols, groom of the bedchamber to the duke of York, the English squadron, which carried the commissioners for New England to Boston, having demanded recruits in Massachusetts, and received on board the governor of Connecticut, approached the narrows, and quietly cast anchor in Gravesend bay (August 28th). Long Island was lost; soldiers from New England pitched their camp near Breukelen ferry.

In New Amsterdam there existed a division of councils. Stuyvesant, faithful to his employers, struggled to maintain their interests; the munici pality, conscious that the town was at the mercy of the English fleet, desired to avoid bloodshed by a surrender. A joint committee from the governor and the city having demanded of Nichols the cause of his presence, he replied by requiring of Stuyvesant the immediate acknowledgment of English sovereignty, with the condition of security to the inhabitants in life, liberty, and property. At the same time, Winthrop of Connecticut, whose love of peace and candid affection for the Dutch nation had been acknowledged by the West India Company, advised his personal friends to offer no resistance. "The surrender," Stuyvesant nobly answered, "would be reproved in the fatherland." The burgomasters, unable to obtain a copy of the letter from Nichols, summoned, not a town meeting-that had been inconsistent with the manners of the Dutch-but the principal inhabitants to the public hall, where it was resolved that the community ought to know all that related to its welfare.

On a more urgent demand for the letter from the English commander, Stuyvesant angrily tore it in pieces; and the burgomasters, instead of resisting the invasion, spent their time in framing a protest against the governor. On the next day (September 3rd) a new deputation repaired to the fleet; but Nichols declined discussion. "When may we visit you again?" said the commissioners. "On Thursday," replied Nichols; "for to-morrow I will speak