world, with banks more inviting than the lands on the Amazon.

Manhattan was already the chosen abode of merchants; and the policy of the government invited them by its goodwill. If Stuyvesant sometimes displayed the rash despotism of a soldier, he was sure to be reproved by his employers. Did he change the rate of duties arbitrarily, the directors, sensitive to commercial honor, charged him "to keep every contract inviolate." Did he tamper with the currency by raising the normal value of foreign coin, the measure was rebuked as dishonest. Did he attempt to fix the price of labor by arbitrary rules, this also was condemned as unwise and impracticable. Did he interfere with the merchants by inspecting their accounts, the deed was censured as without precedent "in Christendom;" and he was ordered to "treat the merchants with kindness, lest they return, and the country be depopulated." Did his zeal for Calvinism lead him to persecute Lutherans, he was chid for his bigotry. Did he, from hatred of "the abominable sect of Quakers," imprison and afterward exile the blameless Bowne, "let every peaceful citizen," wrote the directors, "enjoy freedom of conscience; this maxim has made our city the asylum for fugitives from every land; tread in its steps, and you shall be blessed."

CHAPTER XIV.

NEW NETHERLAND, NEW JERSEY, AND NEW YORK.

PRIVATE Worship was, therefore, allowed to every religion. The Jews found a home, liberty, and a burial-place on the island of Manhattan. The comers from Low Countries were themselves of the most various lineage; for Holland had long been the gathering-place of the persecuted and the wronged of many nations. New York was always a city of the world. Its settlers were relics of the first-fruits of the Reformation, chosen chiefly from the Belgic provinces and England, from France, Germany, and Switzerland. A few of them were the

offspring of those early inquirers who listened to Huss in the heart of Bohemia. The hurricane of persecution, which was to have swept Protestantism from the earth, did not spare the descendants of the medieval Puritans who escaped from bloody conflicts in the south of France to Piedmont and the Italian Alps. The city of Amsterdam, in 1656, offered the fugitive Waldenses a free passage to America, and New Netherland welcomed those who came. When the Protestant

churches in Rochelle were razed, their members were gladly received; and French Protestants so abounded that public documents were sometimes issued in French as well as in Dutch and English.

In Holland "population was known to be the bulwark of every state;" the government of New Netherland asked for "farmers and laborers, foreigners and exiles, men inured to toil and penury." A free passage was offered to mechanics, and troops of orphans were sent over. From the colony a trade in lumber grew up. The whale was pursued off the coast; the vine, the mulberry, planted; flocks of sheep as

well as cattle were multiplied; and tile, long imported from Holland, was manufactured near Fort Orange. "This happily situated province,” said its inhabitants, " may become the granary of our fatherland; should our Netherlands be wasted by grievous wars, it will offer our countrymen a safe retreat; by God's blessing, we shall in a few years become a mighty people."

The African had his portion on the Hudson. The West India company, which sometimes transported captive red men to the West Indies, having large establishments on the coast of Guinea, in 1626 introduced negroes into Manhattan, and continued the trade in them. The city of Amsterdam owned shares in a slave-ship. That New York was not a slave state like Carolina is due to climate, and not to the superior humanity of its founders. Stuyvesant was instructed to use every exertion to promote the sale of negroes. They were imported sometimes by way of the West Indies, often directly from Guinea, and were sold at public auction to the highest bidder. The average price was less than one hundred and forty dollars. The enfranchised negro might become a freeholder.

The large emigrations from Connecticut engrafted on New Netherland the Puritan idea of popular freedom. There were so many English at Manhattan as to require an English secretary, preachers who could speak in English as well as in Dutch, and a publication of civil ordinances in English. New England men planted on Long Island towns and New England liberties in a congregational way, with the consent and under the jurisdiction of the Dutch.

In the fatherland, the power of the people was unknown; in New Netherland, the necessities of the colony had given it a twilight existence; and, in 1642, twelve, then perhaps eight delegates from the Dutch towns, had mitigated the arbitrary authority of Kieft. There was no distinct concession of legislative power to the people; but, without a teacher, they became convinced of the right of resistance. The brewers refused to pay an arbitrary excise: "Were we to yield," said they, in 1644, "we should offend the eight men, and the whole commonalty." The commander of Rensselaer Stein, in 1644,

raised a battery, that "the canker of freemen" might not enter the manor; but the patrons joined the free boors in resisting arbitrary taxation. As a compromise, in 1647, it was proposed that, from a double nomination by the villages, the governor should appoint tribunes, to act as magistrates in trivial cases, and, as agents for the towns, to give their opinion whenever they should be consulted. Town-meetings were prohibited.

Discontents increased. Van der Donck and others were charged with leaving nothing untried to abjure what they called the galling yoke of an arbitrary government. In 1650, a commission repaired to Holland for redress; as freeholders, they claimed the liberties essential to the prosperity of agriculture; as merchants, they protested against the intolerable burden of the customs; and, when redress was refused, tyranny was followed by its usual consequence, clandestine associations against oppression. The excess of complaint obtained for New Amsterdam, in 1652, a court of justice like that of the metropolis; but the municipal liberties included no political franchise; the sheriff was appointed by the governor; the two burgomasters and five schepens made a double nomination of their own successors, from which "the valiant director himself elected the board." The city had privileges, not the citizens. The province gained only the municipal liberties, on which rested the commercial aristocracy of Holland. Citizenship was a commercial privilege, and not a political enfranchisement.

The persevering restlessness of the people led to a general assembly of two deputies from each village in New Netherland; an assembly which Stuyvesant was unwilling to sanction, and could not prevent. As in Massachusetts, this first convention, of December, 1653, sprung from the will of the people; and it claimed the right of deliberating on the civil condition of the country.

"The states general of the United Provinces," such was the remonstrance and petition, drafted by George Baxter, and unanimously adopted by the convention, "are our liege lords; we submit to the laws of the United Provinces; and our rights and privileges ought to be in harmony with those of the fatherland, for we are a member of the state, and not a

subjugated people. We, who have come together from various parts of the world and are a blended community of various lineage; we, who have at our own expense exchanged our native lands for the protection of the United Provinces ; we, who have transformed the wilderness into fruitful farmsdemand that no new laws shall be enacted but with consent of the people, that none shall be appointed to office but with the approbation of the people, that obscure and obsolete laws shall never be revived."

Stuyvesant answered: "Will you set your names to the visionary notions of an Englishman? Is there no one of the Netherlands' nation able to draft your petition? And your prayer is so extravagant, you might as well claim to send delegates to the assembly of their high mightinesses themselves.

1. "Laws will be made by the director and council. Evil manners produce good laws for their restraint; and therefore the laws of New Netherland are good.

2. "Shall the people elect their own officers? If this rule become our cynosure, and the election of magistrates 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, appealed to their inalienable rights. "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." At this, Stuyvesant dissolved the assembly, commanding its members to separate on pain of arbitrary punishment. "We derive our authority from God and the West India company, not from the pleasure of a few ignorant subjects;" was his farewell message to them.

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."