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INTRODUCTION.
In regard to the strictures contained in the Remonstrance, upon the conduct of tl .. Directors General, it must in justice to them be remarked, that while they exerted their authority with rigor and not in consonance with the more liberal notions of popular right at the present day, they appear, from their correspondence, still preserved at Albany, with the West India Company, to have acted for the most part under positive orders, and in accordance, when they had no directions from the Company, with the spirit of their general instructions.    The weakness of New Netherland in men, and in those internal re ources which, in the absence of restrictions upon individual enterpiise and in the existence of a government which affords security to life and property, naturally grow up, became more and more apparent as the encroachments of its neighbors increased.    It was a sense of this weakness that originated the com-plaints which, when they came to be made to ihe government at home, had to be formed into specific charges, which necessarily placed the Directors in an unenviable light, being apparently the immediate authors of the grievances set forth.    The real difficulty however, and the fault were in the management of the Company, which had taken possession of New Netherland for commercial purposes only, and which therefore had in view the planting of a colony for the Netherland nation merely as an ancillary to their profit.    This was obvious when the condition of New Netherland was compared with that of the neighboring colonies; but in making at this day a comparison of its condition at that time with that of the adjoining colonies of the English the distinction, in justice to the Dutch of New Netherland, should be ever borne in mind, that although both the English and Dutch colonies sprang alike from the enterpris3 of incorporated companies of private adventurers, yet the object of the English was not a purely commercial speculation as was that of the Dutch, and that while the Dutch Company continued its control over its colony until its subjugation by the English, the Companies of the latter, at a very early period, and many years before that event, had been dissolved in pursuance of a wiser policy,—looking to the growth and importance of their American possessions,—on the part of the British government.
The proceedings of the deputation on its reaching Holland may be well gathered from the letters of the West India Company to the Director. The Company felt that the causes of complaint were at their own door and not at that of Stuyvesant, and though they