crease and extension of the prosperity of Netherland, to expect much good from serious representations.

Oh, had not this unhappy propensity betrayed itself on the first discovery of this land by Henry Hudson, when, being in England, he was prevented from making his report of his voyage and discovery to his masters, what influence might Netherland's increasing prosperity and sound politics have had on the commerce and manufactures of England! If we credit respectable authority, the Netherlanders possessed then thrice as many vessels as the English: their navy was equal. The Netherlanders made use of six hundred vessels in their trade to England, and England with no more than sixty to Holland.* The whale fishery, thus far only in the possession of the English, awoke the thirst for gain in the merchants of Netherland, and was favoured by a grant of the States, against which the English made a fruitless opposition. What dissensions originated between the two nations about the trade in cloth, in which the city of Middleburg was so highly interested! there the English cloth was imported. But King James, imagining that the colouring of the cloth, as well as the wearing, ought to be performed in his realm, it occasioned coloured cloth to be imported from England into this country, which in the beginning was opposed, but was yielded at length.‡

If the trade in cloth caused a misunderstanding, not less did that of the redemption of the cities Vlissengen and the Briel, with the Fort Rammekens; a masterpiece of politics, by which Oldenbarneveld artfully surprised the English king, and delivered his Fatherland from bondage.

I pass by the establishment of the West India Company, in 1621; the famous controversy about the events at Amboyna; Trong's heroic attack on the Spanish fleet at the Downs; many other gallant and glorious enterprises against the Spanish and Portuguese in Asia, on the coast of Guiana, yea, even in Africa, which rendered the name of the Netherlands formidable; but these also awoke the jealousy of the English, their competitors in so many places and pursuits. To these general reasons of jealousy must be joined, particularly with regard to North America, the displeasure of the English government at the exportations of tobacco from that country to Middleburg and Vlissengen, and somewhat later, the smuggling trade between Virginia and New-Netherlands.**

* Hume's Hist. of England. t. vi. p. 136, 7,

+ Wagnaer Vadert. Hist. H. t. x. p. 67—71, Rapin Thoyras, Hist. D'Angletere t. z. p. 122.

Luzac, Holland's Riches, t. i. p. 356. Vad. Hist. t. x. p. 105.

Hume's Hist. of Great Britain, t. vi. p. 25, and Vad. Hist. t. x. p.

Vad. Hist. t. xi. p. 21.

Aitema Trans. of State and War, t. ii. p. 529.

** Robertson, p. 83-117.

101.

I will not, however, deny that the Netherlanders might, now and then, have given a handle to strengthen such suspicions. It must be confessed, that at first, the English controlled the commerce of Muscovy; but it lasted not long, as the Hollanders and Zealanders not only were at their side, but possessed sufficient strength to press them out of the road. So that after the death of Charles I., the English lost all the advantages of commerce in Muscovy, while their competitors retained them.*

Netherlands compelled not to offend England.

It would have been a wonder indeed, if the descendants of two such nations, settled in a foreign country, so near one another, and dissimilar in power, had lived together in an uninterrupted peace; not less wonderful indeed would it have been, if proposals for accommodation and harmony by the weaker had been adopted by the stronger.

In proportion as the English increased in numbers, to which the continued emigrations of the Puritans and other mal-contents very much contributed, they were obliged indeed to extend the limits of their plantations. Had now the Netherland West India Company possessed the power to defend their possessions with an adequate military force, and to impress their neighbours with respect, perhaps the English colonists might have looked out for other districts.

But how great were the advantages of the Company in the beginning, so that even they paid fifty per cent.! How immense was the spoil which the conquests of the Spanish silver fleet poured into her bosom in the year 1628! The preservation, nevertheless, of the Netherland Brazils, New-Netherlands, Tobago, St. Eustatius, and many other possessions and strongholds along the river Essequibo, and on the coasts of Guiana, required such enormous sums of money, that it seems they were compelled to confine themselves to the fortification of the capital, New Amsterdam, the preservation of the forts on the rivers, on Long Island, and Fort Nassau on the east of the South river, Fort Orange on the North river, and more particularly Fort Good Hope on the Fresh-water river, (Connecticut,) confiding for the rest in measures of equity and discretion as well towards the natives as English.

The States General were obliged to treat the English with deference, as long as the war with Spain continued, more so during the troubles between Charles I. and the parliament, while

405.

Scheltema, Russia and the Netherlands, t. i. p. 70. 80. 168. 207. and 379.

the king himself, who by the compact concluded on the 17th April 1632, at St. Germain, surrendered all the places in NewFrance, Acadia and Canada to the French, was to be careful in not displeasing his subjects by any concessions to the claims of this state or New-Netherlands.*

After the peace was concluded at Munster, some misunderstanding arose with Cromwell, which soon ended in an open war. What then remained for the West India Company, which had work enough at hand with the defence of Brazil against the Portuguese, but the way of negotiation, and how little success might be promised by it?

Disputes with the English colonists about the limits.

The most serious disputes had in the mean while arisen in America between the director and council in New-Netherlands, and the commissioners of the United Colonies of Boston, NewPlymouth, New-Haven and Hartford, partly on the settling of the limits, partly on account of mutual insults to the inhabitants, which threatened open hostilities. The directors of the West India Company commanded the director, Peter Stuyvesant, to endeavour to prevent it by reasonable proposals for a provisional division of the limits.

In consequence of this the aforesaid Director, who went to Hartford in the year 1650, appeared before the legislature, assembled for this purpose, where very courteously was negotiated a provisional division of the limits between the Dutch and English possessions.

It appears, that after the departure of Stuyvesant, this affair was seriously considered, as three commissioners were despatched to New-Amsterdam, to enter into a further deliberation with the director on this subject, and endeavour to bring the division of the limits to a final conclusion. This happened so indeedalthough with the loss of an indisputable right and previous possession of the Netherlanders.

A line was to be drawn on the continent from the bay of Greenwich, four miles from Stamford towards the north, twenty miles long, provided it remained at a distance of ten miles from the North river.

The Netherlanders were not to build within six miles from the division of the boundary.

The inhabitants of Greenwich were to remain as yet under the Dutch government, and the Netherlanders to retain the land

Conduit des Français par raport a la Nouvelle France, traduit de l'Anglois, avec des Notes d'un Français. Londres 1735. p. 103.

which they actually possessed, as far as Hartford, while all the lands on both sides of the Fresh-water river (Connecticut,) should belong to the English. And thus it should remain, till a final decision should have been made between England and Holland.* The Director Stuyvesant made his report of this agreement, as equitable as circumstances permitted him to obtain, to the Department of XIX, in a letter of 26th November, 1650.

During these disputes between the Netherland and English colonies in America, the dissensions in England burst out in open war. The parliament triumphed over the king. The unhappy Charles lost his head on the scaffold the 9th February, 1649, while the helm of government was entrusted to the hands of the fanatic and obstinate Cromwell, a man whom the acknowledged independence and prosperity of Netherlands so much displeased, that it was to be foreseen that open war must ere long be the consequence; especially when the States General refused an audience to his ambassadors, and had permitted the Prince of Wales, (afterwards Charles II.,) so near allied to the house of Orange, a residence in this country.

These were the circumstances of the times in the beginning of the year 1651, when the letter of the Director Stuyvesant was brought before the States General.

The embassy sent to England in the latter part of this year, to put an end to the already begun hostilities, was authorized also to propose to the English parliament the adjustment of the limits in North America. But there was so little inclination to negotiate with this Republic a treaty upon any equitable terms, that entirely new and most unreasonable proposals were made, which had nothing less in view than the entire annihilation of Netherland commerce and naval power, and even looked towards the dominion over the sea.

In this manner the negotiations were drawn out till the end of May, 1652, when the well known rencontre happened between the Netherland and English Admirals Tromp and Blake, before Dover, and the ambassadors of Holland were compelled to depart, without having attained their object.t

After an obstinate war of two years' duration, both parties, weary of fighting, concluded, after Holland had resolved on the act of seclusion, which was delivered to the English Protector, a treaty of peace between the State and England of the 15th April, 1654, without any express mention in the prelimi

* Great Placard Book, t. ii. p. 1278.

+ Fatherl. Hist. xv. p. 215-219 comp. the Not. of Zealand in Febr. 1652. Their High Might. resolved, on the fourth of March, 1653, that no mandamus of appeal should be admitted of any judgments given in New-Netherlands.

naries of the American convention with regard to the settlement of the limits.*

The subject, nevertheless, was not forgotten in our Fatherland. The directors communicated to the States General, by a letter of the 29th Sept., the provisional division of the limits of 1650, with a figurative map, soliciting that this might be delivered to the ambassadors, who in the meanwhile remained in England to negotiate a treaty relative to navigation and the compensation of damages, to make use of it at a proper season, to which their High-Mightinesses agreed, without approving the division of the limits concluded at Hartford; either because they had some objections against it, or that they deemed it improper to explain themselves upon it.

The ambassadors of the Netherlands proposed then to the English commissioners, provided that it should be reciprocally approved, either to sanction the aforesaid division of the limits, or to leave it to the decision of the two governments of the colonies in America, as they were better informed of this affair, and so in their opinion would be most likely to promote their mutual peace and welfare, but with the approbation of both Republics. They communicated this to the States General by a letter of 27th Nov. 1654, complaining, however, that they had not been provided with the necessary proofs relative to the first occupation of the Netherlanders, and the subsequent purchase of those districts from the natives, nor with the legal evidence of the concluded division of the limits, while the English pretended to be ignorant that this state had any possession in that district, or that any division of limits had taken place.||

I find nothing farther about this negotiation, except that the States General on the 22d Nov., 1656, approved that division, probably with the view to promote the negotiations between the West India Company and the city of Amsterdam, with regard to the transfer of a part of New-Netherlands.§

New-Netherlands transferred to the city of Amsterdam.

The department of Amsterdam, to which it seems the government of New-Netherlands was transferred by the department of

* Gr. Plac. Book, t. ii. p. 522. Verbal of Beverningk, p. 357.

+ Verbael van Beverningk, p. 602.

+ Ib. p. 688.

|| Ib. p. 693.

§ Gr. Plac. Book, t. ii. p. 1978. After I had written this narrative, I met with the Coll. of the Hist. Soc. in New-York, t. i. p. 189-303, in which is a collection of the letters and other documents, interchanged between the Nether. land and English government in North America, taken from Ebenezer Hazard's Hist. Coll., which spread much light upon the history of that period.