provinces and England, from France and Bohemia, from Germany and Switzerland, from Piedmont and the Italian Alps.

The religious sects, which, in the middle ages, had been fostered by the municipal liberties of the south of France, were the harbingers of modern freedom, and had therefore been sacrificed to the inexorable feudalism of the north. After a bloody conflict, the plebeian reformers, crushed by the merciless leaders of the military aristocracy, escaped to the highlands that divide France and Italy. Preserving the discipline of a benevolent, ascetic morality, with the simplicity of a spiritual worship,

"When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones," it was found, on the progress of the Reformation, that they had by three centuries anticipated Luther and Calvin. The hurricane of persecution, which was to have swept Protestantism from the earth, did not spare their seclusion; mothers with infants were rolled down the rocks, and the bones of martyrs scattered on the Alpine mountains. The city of Amsterdam offered the fugitive Waldenses a free passage to America, and a welcome was prepared in New Netherland for the few who were willing to emigrate.

1656.

Dec. 19.

The persecuted of every creed and every clime were invited to the colony. When the Protestant churches in Rochelle were razed, the Calvinists of that city were gladly admitted; and the French Protestants came in such numbers that the public documents were sometimes issued in French as well as in Dutch and English. Troops of orphans were shipped for the milder destinies of the New World; a free passage was offered to mechanics; for "population was known to be the bulwark of every state." The government of New Netherland had formed just ideas of the fit materials for building a commonwealth; they desired "farmers and laborers, foreigners and exiles, men inured to toil and penury." The colony increased; children swarmed in every village; the advent of the year and the month of May were welcomed with noisy frolics: new modes of activity were devised; lumber

1664.

was shipped to France; the whale pursued off the coast; the vine, the mulberry, planted; flocks of sheep as well as cattle were multiplied; and tile, so long imported from Holland, began to be manufactured near Fort Orange. New Amsterdam could, in a few years, boast of stately buildings, and almost vied with Boston. "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."

Thus did various nations of the Caucasian race assist in colonizing our central states. The African also had his portion on the Hudson. The West India company, which sometimes transported Indian captives to the West Indies,

having large establishments on the coast of Guinea, 1626. at an early day introduced negroes into Manhattan,

1664.

and continued the negro slave-trade without remorse. We have seen Elizabeth of England a partner in the commerce, of which the Stuarts, to the days of Queen Anne, were distinguished patrons; the city of Amsterdam did not blush to own shares in a slave-ship, to advance money for the outfits, and to participate in the returns. In proportion to population, New York had imported as many Africans as Virginia. That New York is 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 monopoly of the traffic was not strictly enforced; and a change of policy sometimes favored the export of negroes to the English colonies. The enfranchised negro might become a freeholder.

With the Africans came the African institution of abject slavery; 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. Whole towns had been settled by New England men, who, having come to America to serve God with a pure conscience, and desiring to provide for the outward comforts and souls' welfare of their posterities, planted New England liberties in a Congregational way, with the consent and under the jurisdiction of the Dutch. Their presence and their activity foretold a revolution.

1642.

1644.

Aug. 18.

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 delegates from the Dutch towns, at first twelve, then perhaps eight in number, had mitigated the arbitrary authority of Kieft. There was no distinct concession of legislative power to the people; but the people had, without a teacher, become convinced of the right of resistance. The brewers refused to pay an arbitrary excise: "Were we to yield," said they, "we should offend the eight men, and the whole commonalty." The large proprietaries did not favor popular freedom; the commander of Rensselaer Stein had even raised a battery, that "the canker of freemen" might not enter the manor; but the patrons cheerfully joined the free boors in resisting arbitrary taxation. As a compromise, 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 absolutely prohibited.

1644.

1647.

1649 to

1652.

Discontents increased. Vander Donk and others were charged with leaving nothing untried to abjure what they called the galling yoke of an arbitrary government. A commission repaired to Holland for redress; as farmers, 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

1650.

1652. Apr. 4.

by its usual consequence, clandestine associations against oppression. The excess of complaint obtained for New Amsterdam a court of justice like that of the metropolis; but the municipal liberties included no political franchise; the sheriff was appointed by the gov ernor; 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. It was not much more than a license to trade.

1653. Nov. to Dec.

The system was at war with Puritan usages; the Dutch in the colony always relied on themselves; and 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 sprung from the Dec. 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 farms, -demand 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 was taken by surprise. He never had faith in "the wavering multitude;" and doubts of man's capacity

for self-government dictated his reply. "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 1653. inalienable rights. "We do but design the general Dec. 13. 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. “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 1654 to prove more than a vision, listened with complacency

1658.