But the people continued to indulge the dream; taxes could not be collected; and the colonists listened with complacency to the hope of obtaining English liberties by submitting to English jurisdiction.

Cromwell had planned the conquest of New Netherland; in the days of his son the design was revived; on the restoration of Charles II., the influences which framed the new navigation act would not endure a foreign jurisdiction at the mouth of the Hudson river.

In the negotiations of 1659 with the agent of Lord Baltimore, the envoy of New Netherland had firmly maintained the right of the Dutch to the southern bank of the Delaware, pleading purchase and colonization before the Maryland patent had been granted. The facts were conceded; but, in the pride of strength, it was answered that the same plea had not availed Clayborne, and should not avail the Dutch. On the restoration, Lord Baltimore renewed his claims to the country from Newcastle to Cape Henlopen by his agents in Amsterdam and in America, and they were presented to the states general of the United Provinces. The board of nineteen of the West India company resolved "to defend its possessions, even to the spilling of blood." Beekman, the Dutch lieutenant-governor on the Delaware, was faithful to his trust; the jurisdiction of his country was maintained. When young Baltimore, with his train, appeared at the mouth of the Brandywine, he was honored as a guest; but the pretensions of his father were triumphantly resisted. The Dutch and Swedes and Finns kept the country safely for William Penn.

The people of Connecticut not only increased their pretensions on Long Island, but, regardless of the provisionary treaty, claimed West Chester, and were steadily advancing toward the Hudson. To stay these encroachments, Stuyvesant, in 1663, repaired to Boston, and laid his complaints before the convention of the united colonies. His voyage

was a confession of weakness; Massachusetts maintained a neutrality, and Connecticut 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 Netherland?" And the agents of Connecticut, with provoking indifference, replied: "We do not know."

These unavailing discussions were conducted during the horrors of a half-year's war with the savages round Esopus. In June, 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 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." Beyond these, they had no friends.

The province had no popular freedom, and therefore had no public spirit. In New England there were no poor; in New Netherland the poor were so numerous it was difficult to provide for their relief. The one easily supported schools everywhere, and Latin schools in the larger villages; in the other, a Latin school lingered with difficulty through two years, and was discontinued. In the one, the people, in the hour of danger, defended themselves; in the other, the burden of protection was thrown upon the company, which claimed to be the absolute sovereign.

In November, 1663, the necessities of the times wrung from Stuyvesant the concession of an assembly; the delegates of the villages made their appeal to the states general and to the West India company for defence. But the states general had, as it were, invited aggression by abstaining from every public act which should pledge their honor to the defence of the province; and the West India company would not risk its funds. A more full diet was held in April, 1664. Rumors of an intended invasion from England had reached the colony; and the popular representatives, having remonstrated against the want of all means of security, and foreseeing the necessity of submitting to the English, demanded plainly of Stuyvesant: "If you cannot shield us, to whom shall we turn?" The

governor, faithful to his trust, proposed, but in vain, the enlistment" of every third man, as had more than once been done in the fatherland." The established government could not but fall into contempt. In vain was the libeller of the magis trates fastened to a stake, with a bridle in his mouth. Stuyvesant confessed his fears to his employers: "To ask aid of the English villages would be inviting the Trojan horse within our walls;""the company is cursed and scolded; the inhab itants 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. Yet no cause for war on the United Provinces by England existed except English envy of their commerce.

In confidence of peace, the countrymen of Grotius were planning liberal councils; at home, they designed concessions to free trade; in the Mediterranean, to suppress the piracies of the Barbary states. At that time the English were engaging in an expedition against the Dutch possessions on the coast of Guinea; and the king, with equal indifference to the chartered rights of Connecticut and the claims of the Netherlands, "by the most despotic instrument recorded in the colonial archives of England," on the twelfth of March, 1664, granted to the duke of York not only the country from the Kennebec to the St. Croix, but the territory from the Connecticut river to the shores of the Delaware. Under the conduct of Richard Nicolls, groom of the bed-chamber 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, on the twenty-eighth of August, 1664, cast. anchor in Gravesend bay. Soldiers from New England pitched their camp near Breukelen ferry.

In New Amsterdam, 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 Nicolls the cause of his presence, he replied by requiring of Stuy

vesant 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 Nicolls, 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 third of September, a new deputation repaired to the fleet; but Nicolls declined discussion. "When may we visit you again?" asked the commissioners. "On Thursday,” replied Nicolls; "for to-morrow I will speak 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-ofwar and soldiers." The commissioners returned to advocate the capitulation, which was quietly effected in the following days. The aristocratic liberties of Holland yielded to the hope of popular liberties like those of New England.

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, and not ratified by Stuyvesant till the eighth of September, after 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 to choose their own magistrates, and Manhattan, now first known as New York, to elect its deputies, with free voices in all public affairs.

In a few days Fort Orange, then named Albany, from the Scottish title of the duke of York, quietly surrendered; and the league with the Five Nations was renewed. Early in October the Dutch and Swedes on the Delaware capitulated; and, for the first time, the Atlantic coast of the old thirteen states was in possession of England. Our country obtained geographical unity.

In honor

On the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of the previous June the duke of York had assigned to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, both proprietaries of Carolina, the land between the Hudson and the Delaware. The dismemberment of New Netherland ensued on its surrender. of Carteret, the severed territory, with nearly the same bounds as at present, except on the north, received the name of New Jersey. If to fix boundaries and grant the soil could constitute a state, the duke of York gave political existence to a commonwealth; its character was moulded by New England Puritans, English Quakers, and dissenters from Scotland.

In February, 1665, the royalists, who were become lords of the soil, sought to foster their province by most liberal concessions. Security of persons and property under laws to be made by an assembly composed of the governor and council, and at least an equal number of representatives of the people; freedom from taxation except by the colonial assembly; a combined opposition of the people and the proprietaries to any arbitrary impositions from England; freedom of judgment, conscience, and worship to every peaceful citizen-these were the allurements to New Jersey. To the proprietaries were reserved a veto on provincial enactments, the appointment of judicial officers, and the executive authority. Lands were promised at a moderate quit-rent, not to be collected till 1670. The duke of York, now president of the African company, was the patron of the slave-trade; the proprietaries offered a bounty of seventy-five acres for the importation of each able emigrant, and, as in Carolina, the concession was interpreted to include the negro slave. That the tenure of estates might rest on equity, the Indian title to lands was in all cases to be quieted.

The portion of New Netherland which thus gained popular