USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century. Vol. I > Part 27
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that they would not admit the Dutch right although they well knew it, and, far from excusing their invasion,
. . . will now accuse us of this and similar things, all under the pre- tence of an exceedingly scrupulous conscience, and have forged and invented many things to serve them for a screen or fence, or indeed as a pretext for delay.
That is, as a pretext for delaying that settlement of bound- ary lines for which Stuyvesant continued to ask. Their one excuse for their intrusion was that the land was not 'wholly occupied,'
. .. as if these people, who now by means of their greater numbers do as they please, were at liberty to dictate the law to our nation within its own purchased lands and limits, and to order how and in what man- ner it must settle the country, and if it do not happen to suit exactly their desire and pleasure, they are at liberty to invade and appropriate our waters, lands, and jurisdiction.
In summing up all these grievances and problems the Remonstrance says that public property ought to be rightly cared for; the church ought to be fostered; there should be a public school with at least two good masters instead of only one indifferent teacher irregularly supplied; there should be asylums for aged people and for orphans, and other ‘similar institutions'; and above all:
The country must also be provided with moral, honorable, and in- telligent rulers who are not very indigent nor yet very covetous. A covetous ruler makes poor subjects, and the mode in which the coun- try is now governed is a great affliction and not to be tolerated. .. . Good population should follow good government. . .. If a boundary were added . .. then with God's help everything would, in human probability, go well and New Netherland could be in a short time a brave place able, also, to be of service to the Netherland State, richly to repay expended outlays, and to thank her benefactors.
While the Remonstrance promised this, the Additional Obser- vations gave voice to explicit warnings:
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The country has arrived to that state that if it be not now assisted it will not need any aid hereafter because the English will wholly absorb it. . .. It will lose even the name New Netherland and no Dutchman will have anything to say there. ...
If your High Mightinesses please to believe us we say, and it is a moral certainty, . . . there will not be another opportunity or season to remedy New Netherland for the English will annex it.
Even if these documents contained no praises of New Netherland, no assurances that under the right conditions it would quickly prosper and flourish, as much might be divined from the very vigor of the protests against existing con- ditions. Not hopelessness breeds discontent, but hope that is thwarted by causes seen to be removable; not mere misery, but a sense that a growing prosperity has been checked, or that a prosperity near to unfolding has been delayed, by a blight that effort may remove. It was natural that, with all their confidence in what the province could do for itself if it got the chance, its spokesmen should complain that the Company had not kept its pledges of assistance. Like most human beings the New Netherlanders wanted all that had been promised them, and did not want to do for themselves what others had engaged to do on their behalf. Moreover, paternalism had not yet been discredited as a method of gov- ernment in any part of America. Even the men of Massa- chusetts, so fearful of government control from across the sea, thoroughly believed in paternalism at home and in many ways practised it in an extreme degree. Yet, anxious though the New Netherlanders were that if the West India Company should continue to control them it should be made to care for them as it had promised, they saw that to be independent of it would profit them more than to receive any amount of its paternalistic care. To those who live in larger communi- ties some of the questions they raised may seem trivial, some of their complaints petty in spirit. But little things loom large in small places, and little acts of oppression may be more exasperating and really more injurious where rulers are in close daily contact with their people than greater ones com-
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mitted indirectly from a distance. Again, unsatisfactory conditions and unpopular personages are, perhaps, sometimes too blackly painted in the Remonstrance. Yet even when the words are most censorious they almost always carry convic- tion because they frame definite charges with such scrupu- lous care. Quite pedantically the signers of the Remonstrance distinguish between facts proved and merely believed, between words repeated verbatim and merely paraphrased, between deeds witnessed by all men or only by a few; and at the end they say:
High and Mighty Lords! We have taken the liberty to write this Remonstrance and to submit the case as we have done through our love of the truth and because we have felt bound to do so by our oath and conscience. It is true that all of us, either together or individually, have not seen, heard, or had a knowledge of the entire contents in every particular; nevertheless, it contains nothing but what some among us well know to be true and credible. We all know the greatest part of it to be the truth; some are acquainted with the remainder of it, and have also heard it from trustworthy persons and sincerely believe it to be wholly true.
For almost two hundred years after they served their im- mediate purpose these interesting papers, written by the fore- fathers of New York in a tongue strange to its modern ear, lay forgotten amid the archives of the country which soon indeed ceased to have 'anything to say' about the province it had created. Because of this eclipse, in which of course almost all the other written legacies of New Netherland were shrouded, all the early and many of the later chapters in the history of the province were for generations misunderstood. In consequence, the part that its inhabitants played in the slow but never ceasing colonial struggle for liberty has seldom been appreciated. The 'rapid change but slow progress of four hundred years' by which liberty has been preserved, secured, and extended, says Lord Acton, has been due to 'the combined efforts of the weak made under compulsion to resist the reign of force and constant wrong.' Seldom has any community as weak as was the one on Manhattan in 1649
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- a community of a few hundred souls of diverse nationalities, most of them in poverty, many of them in distress - seldom has such a community made so dignified, sensible, and self- respecting an effort of this sort; never, perhaps, has such a one left so worthy and interesting a record thereof. The most remarkable of the many paragraphs of the Remon- strance are, perhaps, those that reveal a conscientious, gener- ous humility of spirit in regard to the savages with whom a disastrous war had so recently been waged:
We are also beholden in the highest degree to the Indians who not only surrendered this rich and fertile country and for a trifle made it over to us, but did, over and above, also enrich us with their valuable and mutual trade, so that there is none in New Nether- land or trading to that country but is under obligation thereby. Great is our shame now, and fortunate should we be did we duly ac- knowledge this benefit and in return for what the Indians had shared with us of their substance endeavor, as much as in us lay, to divide with them the Good Eternal. It is to be feared that for this injury they will stand up against us at the last day. Lord of Hosts ! forgive us that we have not hitherto comported ourselves better in this matter; but grant us the means and direct our hearts that we in future duly acquit ourselves herein unto the salvation of our own and their souls and the glorifying of Thy Holy name, for Christ his sake, Amen.
It is interesting to contrast this passage with one or another in which the New Englanders confessed that their sufferings at the hands of the savages were just scourgings for their own offences. For instance, we read in the records of Massachu- setts that King Philip's War was an evident punishment for idleness and excessive drinking, for the neglect to instruct children properly in spiritual matters, and for the pride mani- fested by the long hair, natural or false, worn by the women and the strange and immodest fashions of apparel adopted by rich and poor. And when the war was over Increase Mather wrote:
Where are the six Narragansett sachems and all their captains and councillors ? Where are the Nipmuck sachems with their captains
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and councillors ? Where is Philip and the squaw-sachem of Pocasset with all their captains and councillors ? God do so to all the implacable enemies of Christ and of his people of New England.
Other differences also appear when these Dutch papers are contrasted with those that the New Englanders sent across the sea. Their signers neither feared nor distrusted the gov- ernment of their fatherland - Patria as they continued to call it. What they wanted in America was not to make themselves independent of Holland but to share in the bene- fits its home-keeping sons enjoyed, to reproduce the political conditions under which they lived. The men of New Amster- dam thought the government of Holland their best friend and were asking its help against the West India Company which, except to draw profit from the province, never in- quired whether it 'sank or swam.' They wanted local self- government, not for theoretical reasons and not with the wish to set up a new commonwealth of their own, but because they had learned from happy experience in the Old World, from sad experience in the New, that it was the only foundation for security and progress, for corporate and for individual success. Therefore they could venture to be sincere and frank in their speech as the New Englanders could not when they were writing to the government in England. Nor, again, does it appear from the documents or the correspondence of this or of later years that the New Netherlanders ever thought of using one means of persuasion recognized as essential by the New Englanders during their long struggle to preserve their liberties - that means to which Shirley referred when he wrote to Bradford of Plymouth that 'many locks must be unlocked with the silver, nay, with the golden key.'
The documents of 1649 show also that the Dutch and semi- Dutch inhabitants of Manhattan and its neighborhood were making their struggle for autonomy unsupported. The up- river colonists gave them no aid. The patroon's officials were, indeed, fighting the West India Company but in the good old feudal way .- for that ancient kind of liberty which meant
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the right of overlords to do as they pleased. They cared noth- ing for the case of their enemy's subjects on Manhattan except as the outcome might weaken the Company's authority and thus enlarge their own. The Englishmen near Manhattan, content for the moment with the town charters they had secured, also kept to themselves, hatching schemes of their own. Thomas Hall, the refugee from Virginia, seems to have been the sole Netherlander of English birth who stood with the Dutch petitioners. The other Englishmen were the only persons in the province, except some of Stuyvesant's sub- ordinates in office, who declared themselves content with his administration and with the Company's control.
It is not even indirectly true, as has often been said since Bancroft so affirmed, that the 'large emigration from New England' inspired New Netherland's desire for self-govern- ment. Neither the Petition nor the Remonstrance of 1649 is tinged with English ideas. Neither mentions the New Eng- landers except as dangerous enemies. And although the Additional Observations describe with great praise the methods of government that prevailed in the United Colonies they do so merely to accentuate the general truth that colonies thrive best, that all communities thrive best, when they govern them- selves. Nowhere do they hint that the petitioners had got from the English their perception of this truth, and nowhere do they say that they want rights and privileges modelled upon New England patterns. They say that New Netherland ought to have, like its neighbors, entire freedom in trade and respectable men to direct its affairs; and they say so because there was 'fundamentally an equality' in condition and in needs between the Dutch and the English colonies. But they do not ask that New England institutions shall be repro- duced in New Netherland. Under the 'laudable government' of Patria they had learned the nature and the worth of liberty, and in accordance with the precedents of Patria they wished the government of the province to be framed.
It may be said again that the local institutions they desired were not such as would have contented Englishmen in America.
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But the term 'burgher government' implied much more than it seems to when translated. Municipal government did not mean to the Dutchman merely what it meant at the time to an Englishman or what it means to an American to-day. The United Netherlands were a loose confederation of seven sovereign provinces each of which was a republic built up of many smaller republics - chartered cities and towns and the manors that had survived from feudal times. Through their local magistracies these little republics administered their own affairs while some of them, specially privileged, joined in choosing the delegates who formed the provincial assemblies or States. These States in their turn chose the delegates from each province who formed the States General, and this cen- tral body held only such powers as the States agreed among themselves to confer upon it. In fact, none of these bodies, central or provincial, was a sovereign legislature like our senates and assemblies. Each was simply a body of delegates held with great strictness to the duty of executing the will of the lower assemblies or the local councils which they rep- resented and to which they had to refer back their decisions for confirmation. Thus the real power over the destinies of the great Republic rested with the little local republics and chiefly with the cities, for the representatives of the cities cast many more votes in the provincial States than did the manorial lords - in the States of the province of Holland, for instance, eighteen votes as against one which represented the nobility as a whole. It is plain, therefore, that when New Amsterdam demanded 'burgher government' it was asking for what it intended should grow into a directing, controlling force in that provincial government which, it may be pointed out, had itself been modelled upon the municipal precedents of the fatherland.
At once the Nine Men selected three of their number - Van der Donck, Van Couwenhoven, and Bout - to carry their petitions to Holland, giving them a letter of credence to the States General. Van Dincklagen wrote that as he had not
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been able to dissuade the commonalty from sending these envoys he hoped they would secure an audience; they were thoroughly conversant with the affairs of the country and, he believed, intended what was right. Cornelis Melyn went with them to plead his own cause afresh, being 'weary of suf- fering without any fault of his own.' Greatly alarmed, Stuyvesant despatched Secretary Van Tienhoven to present his side of the case.
In spite of active opposition from the West India Company the States General graciously received Van der Donck and his colleagues and before the end of the year referred to a com- mittee all their papers and those that Stuyvesant had sent. By this time another antagonist had entered the field, con- tending less on behalf of New Amsterdam than against the Company on other grounds - Wouter Van Twiller, urging the pretensions of Rensselaerswyck to more respect than they had received either from the Company at home or from its representatives on Manhattan. Domine Backerus supported the pleas of his flock by prayers of his own. And the printing- press of the fatherland was soon set to work to speak for the province.
It was in 1649 that the Breeden Raedt was published at Antwerp. Broad Advice to the United Netherland Provinces it is commonly called in English although there has been some question as to the accuracy of this translation. It was one among many pamphlets of the time which, from one vulner- able point or another, attacked the West India Company in the effort to discredit it with the public and to induce the States General to abandon it altogether. A tract of some forty-five pages, the Breeden Raedt is wholly devoted to the affairs of New Netherland and is the most striking and inter- esting commentary upon them that was produced in the father- land. The 'broad advice' is given in the form of a conversa- tion between a Dutch skipper and a Dutch boatswain, a Portuguese sailor from Brazil, a Swedish student, a Spanish barber, a French merchant, a Neapolitan, a Pole, a 'High- Dutch gentleman,' and a 'poor English nobleman.' Lively
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indeed is their conversation, in which the skipper and the Portuguese take the lead in abusing the Company. A satire in intention, and a very bitter one in temper, it has not the same authority, of course, as the simple and direct com- plaints and expositions of the New Netherlanders themselves. But if read with discretion it greatly helps to illuminate their words, and, as has already been shown, it records more than one fact or incident in the history of the province that is other- wheres unchronicled or not fully set forth. Many commen- tators have fixed upon Cornelis Melyn as its author but the most learned and careful of them all, Asher, does not accept this supposition. Certainly in its exaggerated accusations and its rude and violent modes of expression the Breeden Raedt differs as greatly from the papers Melyn is known to have written as it does in its dramatic form. The defence of himself and Kuyter that Melyn laid before Governor Stuy- vesant's court, highly rhetorical in style and sprinkled with quotations from classical authors and apostolic fathers, might have been written by a Leyden professor. It would have meant literary genius to be able to pass from such a style to the bold, virulent, roughly effective style of the Breeden Raedt. More sensibly this may be credited to the pen of one of the professional pamphleteers who abounded in Holland.
In January, 1650, the delegates from New Amsterdam prepared from the papers they had brought with them an abstract, in the shape of sixty-eight briefly stated charges, which they called a Short Digest of the Excesses and Highly Injurious Neglect which New Netherland has Experienced Since it has been Placed under the Company. The original of the Company's reply to this Digest still exists, in the handwriting of Cornelis Van Tienhoven. It proves scarcely anything except the anger of the Company with the inhabitants of its province and its undisguised contempt for their complaints.
Then the envoys from New Netherland laid its case before the people of the fatherland, printing the Remonstrance in a slightly altered form but with the same name - Vertoogh
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van Nieu Nederland - as a quarto pamphlet of twenty-nine pages. In February the directors of the Company wrote to General Stuyvesant :
Formerly New Netherland was never spoken of; and now heaven and earth seem to be stirred up by it, and everyone tries to be the first in selecting the best pieces there. . . .
If we were to relate all the intrigues set to work here by the said deputies, Cornelis Melyn, and Wouter Van Twiller, to rob the Com- pany of the land so dearly bought with money and blood, we should either not have time enough or our memory would shrink from the task. ... Your apprehensions concerning Domine Backerus, the preacher, have, as you expected, been verified. He has made common cause with the complainants come from your parts, silly people - or at least the majority of them - who have been badly misled by a few seditious persons, like Cornelis Melyn, Adriaen Van der Donck, and some others. These men seem to leave nothing untried to upset every form of government, pretending that they suffered under too heavy a yoke. Wouter Van Twiller confirms them in this opinion and aims at the command of the whole North River; he admits publicly that he does not intend to allow anyone to navigate the river for the purpose of trade. .
The Company was not satisfied with Stuyvesant, blaming him almost as much as Kieft for the troubles and disorders in its province, yet it publicly sustained his course and con- tinued to write to him in an amicable if reproachful strain. Meanwhile the envoys pressed for a decision on their ap- peals, saying that the governor was now acting in direct opposition to the Nine Men, and bringing witnesses to prove that these officials dared not express their wishes in the face of his violent enmity. In April the Company wrote to the governor that it had been forced to ask the aid of the city of Amsterdam in upholding its rights in its province:
Very likely a great explosion would have been the result if it had not been prevented by the careful management of the Honorable Deputies from their High Mightinesses who have discovered means by which they expect to satisfy provisionally either side.
This scheme, submitted to their High Mightinesses the States General by their committee in April after much con-
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sultation with the directors of the Company, was called a Provisional Order for the Government, Preservation, and Population of New Netherland. It prescribed that no hostili- ties with the Indians should again be entered upon without the knowledge of the home government, and that Damen and Planck, who had been instrumental in bringing on Kieft's war, should be examined by this government. It said that the militia of the province should be properly enrolled and armed; that good schoolmasters and three competent clergy- men should be provided; that agriculture should be fostered and trade with Brazil encouraged; that the Company should annually expend 15,000 guilders in transporting poor emi- grants, and that all private vessels should be obliged to carry those who would pay. It ordered that:
On the increase of population and the augmentation of inhabitants a Council of Justice shall be erected within the province ;
And within the City of New Amsterdam a Burgher Government consisting of a schout, two burgomasters, and five schepens.
Meanwhile the Nine Men should continue three years longer with independent judicial powers in small private cases. Two of the five members of the governor's council should be elected from among the residents of the country on the nomi- nation of delegates from the commonalty and the patroons of colonies; they should be asked to give consent to the im- position of duties and taxes; and they should arrange for their payment and for the collection and management of the pub- lic funds 'on such footing as their constituents shall order.' Furthermore, General Peter Stuyvesant should return to the Hague to report, and a 'suitable person' experienced in agri- cultural matters should be sent out in his stead.
This Provisional Order, which the committee asked the States General to ratify and to impose upon the West India Company, did not grant all that the New Netherlanders asked, but if it had been carried out they would have been satisfied for the time. Even the framing of it greatly stimulated emigration to the province.
VOL. I. - X
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Immigration from New England also continued. In 1649 so prominent a person as the younger John Winthrop, who three years before had taken his family from Boston to a settlement he had begun at the mouth of the Pequot River (now New London), thought of moving again and asked George Baxter what privileges settlers under the Dutch en- joyed. Baxter answered, in March, 1650:
For what the English enjoy, in general, are these : each respective town settled by them have the choice of their own magistrates and regulated by such civil orders as they shall make among themselves concerning town affairs; the said magistrates have power to determine absolutely without appeal all actions under 50 guilders for debt, tres- pass, or fine, and to pass sentence in all other actions of a greater sum, and cause execution thereof if the party condemned maketh not appeal in eight days' time to the superior court. For deprivation of life, limb, or member the delinquents are to be tried by the superior court and by them adjudged. Liberty of conscience according to the cus- tom of Holland is granted unto all. For matter of acknowledgment we are to pay the tenth part of what shall be produced by the plough or hoe after the expiration of ten years, and to be paid in the field before it is housed; for other public taxes we are to be altogether ex- empt from.
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