New Amsterdam decreed that the Great Burgher Right could be given to:

1. Former and actual members of the Provincial Government.

2. Former and actual Burgomasters and Schepens.

3. Ministers of the Gospel.

4. Commissioned officers, the Ensign included.

5. All who may apply for it and pay fifty florins.

6. All the descendants in the male line of the foregoing.

To Small Burgher Right were entitled:

1. All who had resided, keeping fire and light, in the city for one year and six weeks.

2. All born in the city.

3. All who have married, or may hereafter marry, native-born burghers' daughters.

4. All who now, or hereafter, keep shop and carry on business, on application and payment of twenty-five florins.

5. All employees in the Company's pay, and new-comers who may intend to settle elsewhere, provided they do so within six weeks after arrival.

The money to be obtained from this source was to go into the City Treasury and to be used chiefly for the fortifications. The privileges granted to the great burgher were much more important than those of his poorer neighbor. Only men of the great burgher class were eligible to office; they were exempt from watch and other military duty during one year and six months, and could not personally be arrested by any of the inferior courts. The small burgher had only the privilege of paying his fees and attending to his business. The list of 1657 gives two hundred and twenty-five names of persons who applied and received their papers.

The next step in the evolution of municipal government was an order of the Director and Council, March 6, 1657,' regulating the financial administration: "Whereas the Burgomasters in office have to attend not only to the business of their position for the benefit of the City, but also to their private affairs, the duties of a Treasurer shall henceforth be taken care of by the Burgomaster last going out of office."

Nothing having disturbed the relations between Stuyvesant and the magistrates during the year 1657, the right to nominate their successors was conceded to the magistrates, January 28, 1658. But now the creation of classes among the citizens introduced an unexpected

1 N. Y. Col. MSS., 6: 469.

inconvenience, for among the twenty great burghers qualified for election were the Director-General himself, the resident Domine, and some women, and the number of eligible persons, from whom seven were to be chosen, had dwindled below that number, and the already unpopular classification had to be modified. But as yet the election of a Schout was denied, and Councilor Nicasius De Sille continued to act for the city.

The management of the municipal finances furnished the next cause for trouble, for although the city had its Treasurer, his accounts were subject to auditing by the Director and Council. In a commu

nication to the city magistrates of January 22, 1658,' Stuyvesant and Council say that the accounts for the preceding year are very defective and unreliable, "for the items on the debtor side have no day nor datum to show when the money was received, and it is presumed that more has or ought to have been received by the tax levy; besides, there are wanting the accounts for rent due up to now,-i. e., the middle of December, or three-quarters of the year, which would amount to about four thousand florins. As to the expenses, there are many items defective and not allowable, which need further explanations." The explanations given by the Burgomasters, February 19, 1658, were unsatisfactory, and the magistrates, although thinking, as they said, that they had acted for the best of the city, were sent back to their Hall, to find better excuses. They had not improved their position by asking on the day when the preceding communication was under consideration in the Council that, on account of "the scantiness of the City's revenues and the many necessary repairs to public works," the income from the Weighhouse might be turned into the municipal Treasury," according to the good custom of the Fatherland." They were told: "The weighing of goods is regalia belonging to the Supreme Authority or the Patroons, and the request can therefore not be granted. It is practicable at home, both in cities and in villages, where State or Communal works are erected, because required or ornamental, to call for the money to erect on the inhabitants for whose benefit they are intended, without diminishing the general revenues, which you, Burgomasters and Schepens, have for some time. been trying and still endeavor to do by asking for this or that domain

1 N. Y. Col. MSS., p. 665.

2 Ib.,

p. 738.

3 Ib., p. 675.

of the Company or for the imposition of taxes on Company's or citizens' property. To give our consent to such proceedings would lay us open to deserved blame." This controversy over municipal finances and their administration was settled by a brevi manu threat of Stuyvesant, that if the city's accounts could not be kept in better order, the Company's receiver or some other proper person would be charged with this duty.

The question of appointing a Schout for the city, instead of having him elected like the other magistrates, had in the mean time not been settled. Stuyvesant continued to impose his appointees on the city, and the magistrates rebelled by refusing to recognize Resolved Waldron, the Deputy Schout appointed in May, 1658. Upon his complaint over this treatment, Burgomasters and Schepens were told that they must recognize him as such,' but they managed, in a quiet manner, to have their own way. They sent Pieter Tonneman, late Schout of Breuckelen and the other Dutch villages on Long Island, as their choice to the Amsterdam directors, and in April, 1660, he triumphantly returned with his commission as Schout of New Amsterdam, and took his seat on the bench till now occupied by De Sille.

No internal political strife disturbed the few remaining years of the life of the City of New Amsterdam before she had to take the present name of New-York, a more or less unwilling bride of the English usurper. But some changes in its institutions must be noted. The inhabitants were still jealous on the subject of residence,

and at their request Stuyvesant modified

\ecafins de sille

the law regarding it so that persons who absented themselves from the city for four months "without keeping fire and light" there should lose their Burgher Right.

Foreign politics began to exert its influence on the relations between Stuyvesant and the magistrates of the city during the last year of his Directorate. Charles II. had ascended the throne of England, and was beginning to think with how much ingratitude he could requite the hospitality extended to him during his exile in the Netherlands. Under a grant from him to his brother James, Duke of York and Albany, the English were taking possession of the Dutch towns on Long Island, and New Amsterdam was threatened by a like fate, to which in its poor state of defense it would easily have fallen a victim. When Stuyvesant sought the advice of the Burgomasters and Schepens how to avert such a disaster, they recommended that "the capital, adorned with so many noble buildings at the expense of the good and faithful inhabitants, principally Dutchmen," should be thoroughly fortified, and that troops in sufficient number should be

1 N. Y. Col. MSS., p. 1015.

enrolled to protect New Amsterdam and the province, which would soon become an emporium to the Fatherland. But it was not to be; in order that the United States should arise, and that New-York should become the "emporium" of the Western World, it was necessary that New Netherland should be united to the other English colonies in its neighborhood.

We have so far seen Stuyvesant in his relations to New Amsterdam as the representative of the directors of the West India Company in military, commercial, and political matters, but there remains yet the administrator in matters of importance to the city seen from the communal point.

The letter of November 14, 1647, quoted above, dated "in our bedroom," closes with the recommendation to the Nine Men to advise him in regard to proper regulations about fires, "which might break out here as well as in other places. It must be done with the least expense and damage to the community." Two months later, January 23 and 28, 1648, he issued an ordinance, appointing fire-wardens and forbidding the use of wooden chimneys in the houses between the fort near the present Bowling Green and the Fresh Water, now occupied by the Tombs and neighborhood.' Fines imposed on persons who persisted in using wooden chimneys, or in whose house a fire broke out, were to be applied to the purchase of fire-ladders, buckets, and hooks. The unfortunate citizen whom fire visited had not only to suffer loss of goods, but also to pay twenty-five florins ($10) for the pleasure of it. In September of the same year the powers of the firewardens were enlarged, and they were directed to visit every house and see that the chimneys were properly cleaned, because fires had occurred in two places, occasioned by the negligence of certain persons who were in the habit of leaving their chimneys uncleaned and of paying no attention to their fires.3

In a place the houses of which were mostly wooden, the enforcement of rules for the prevention of fires can never be called too harsh, but in this case Stuyvesant seems to have been over-lenient. We have no distinct record of any fire breaking out in the mean time, except during the Indian invasion of 1655, when not the best-regulated fire department could have done anything, but Stuyvesant allowed ten years to pass before his attention was again called to this matter. The former ordinances had fallen into oblivion, the possibilities of destruction of the whole city had increased, because the wooden houses were covered with thatched roofs, still had their wooden chimneys, and stood in close proximity to inflammable haystacks. A new ordinance of December 15, 1657,* ordered a change of roofs and chimneys and a removal of the dangerous hayricks, etc. The city magis

IN. Y. Col. MSS., 4: 38 and 41.

2 Laws of N. N., p. 82.

3 Ib., p. 102. 4 Ib., p. 322.

trates were authorized to demand from every house, whether small or large, one beaver or eight florins ($3.20) in wampum, and to procure from the Fatherland with this money two hundred and fifty leathern fire-buckets, also to have some fire

ladders and hooks made. To maintain this establishment they may yearly collect a chimney tax of one florin for each. The promptness with which the magistrates carried out this order must have convinced Stuyvesant that government by and for the people, limited though it was in 1657, could accomplish more than he had supposed. The hooks and ladders, made by workmen in the city, were soon placed, as required by the ordinance, "at the corners of the streets, in public houses and other places convenient of access." The difficulties attending the purchase in and transport from the Netherlands of fire-buckets induced the Burgomasters to

Charles

try whether they could not be made in New Amsterdam. Several shoemakers were called to a meeting in the Council chamber of the City Hall, August 1, 1658, and two of them, Remout Remoutsen and Arian Van Laer, agreed to make one hundred and fifty buckets out of tanned leather, for six florins two stivers ($2.44) each, by All Saints' Day. When delivered and numbered on the 20th of January, 1659, they were distributed so that fifty of them were placed in the City Hall, twelve at the inn of Daniel Litschoe (near the intersection of the present Broad and Pearl streets), another dozen at the house of Abraham Verplank in the Smit's Valey (near the present Custom House), and at other convenient places to the number of ten or twelve at each. The Fire Department of New-York was established, and can claim to be one of the oldest institutions of the city!

The other department to whose watchful energy the protection of life and property is confided- the Police- is not one of Stuyvesant's creations, although he issued ordinances for such protection, among them the ordinance of May 31, 1647, against fighting with knives, a frequent occurrence in those days; of June 27, 1652, against fast driving through the streets, which made it punishable for the drivers to sit or stand in their conveyances; of October 9, 1652, against shooting with firearms at partridges and other game within the limits of the

VOL. I.-19.