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260

COMMERCE OF NEW ENGLAND.

captured by the other belligerent powers. After some unimportant disturbances, a treaty was signed with the Indian tribes, in June, and another at Casco Bay, in September. Although the colonists were hurt at the conduct of the English ministers, in giving up Cape Breton, which they very justly termed "their own conquest," to the French, yet they were not again disturbed with Indian hostilities, until the French war of 1756--1763, which brought all Canada to the subjection of the British crown.

In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the annual imports into these provinces from England were estimated by Neal at £100,000. The exports, says Grahame, by the English merchants consisted of a hundred thousand quintals (the quintal weighing 112 lbs.) of dried codfish, which were sold in Europe for £80,000, and of three thousand tons of naval stores. To the other American plantations, and to the West Indies, New England sent lumber, fish and other provisions, valued at £50,000 annually. An extensive manufacture of linen cloth was now established in New England; an advantage for which this country was indebted to the migration of many thousands of Irish Presbyterians to her shores about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Ship-building was, from an early period, carried on to a considerable extent at Boston and other sea-port towns. It was the practice of some merchants to freight their vessels, as they built them, with cargoes of colonial produce, and to sell the vessels in the same ports in which the cargoes were disposed of. The manufacture of tar was promoted for some time in New Hampshire by a law enacted in the assembly of this province in the beginning of the eighteenth century, which allowed the inhabitants to pay taxes in tar, rated at twenty shillings per barrel. A great part of the trade of the other American colonies was conducted by the shipping of New England.

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COLONIZATION OF NEW YORK.

EW YORK is distinguished from the other American colonies whose history we have considered, both by the race of Europeans who first settled it, and by the mode of its annexation to the dominions of Britain. In all the other provinces, Delaware and Pennsylvania excepted, the first colonists were Englishmen; and all the permanent settlements resulted from the enterprise of English subjects, impelled by the spirit of commercial adventure or religious zeal. But the territory

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EXPEDITION OF HUDSON.

of New York was originally colonized from Holland; and its incorporation with the rest of the British dominions in America was accomplished by conquest and the forces of the state, not by settlement and individual enterprise. It is a singular fact, that this military conquest proved the means of establishing a colony of Quakers in America; and the sword of Charles II., in conquering an appanage for his bigot brother, prepared a tranquil establishment in New Jersey and Pennsylvania for the votaries of peace, toleration, and philanthropy.

The prior but unacknowledged right of England to all the lands discovered by Cabot, had, as yet, produced no other permanent occupation than a feeble settlement on James river, when Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the service of the Dutch East India Company, set sail from the Texel, in search of a north-west passage to India. After a fruitless search, he steered for Cape Cod, and entered Chesapeake Bay, where he remarked the infant settlement of the English. He afterwards anchored off the Delaware, and thence proceeding to Long Island, sailed up the Manhattan river, on whose banks the chief fruits of his enterprise were to be gathered.

The Dutch, conceiving that they had acquired sufficient title to the adjacent territory from Hudson's expedition, named it Nova Belgia, or New Netherlands; and gave to the river on whose shores their new dominions lay, the name of its discoverer. The favourable reports of the country, as given by Hudson, being confirmed by subsequent voyagers, an association of Dutch merchants determined to establish a tradingsettlement within its limits; and the states general promoted the enterprise by granting to its projectors the exclusive trade of the river.

Encouraged by this act of favour, the adventurers sent out a colony the same year (1614), erected a fort on the western bank of the river, near Albany, and intrusted the government to Henry Christaens. This feeble settlement was scarcely established, when Captain Argal, with a Virginian squadron, on his return from the useless conquest of the French posses

NEW NETHERLANDS SETTLED.

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sions in Acadie, invaded the place, and obliged the governor to surrender his command, and to stipulate alliance to England, and subordination and tribute to the government of Virginia. The States of Holland, fearing to offend a new and powerful ally, whose friendship they could not well dispense with, forbore to notice Argal's hostile encroachments. But the year after, a new governor, Jacob Elkin, being sent out with a reinforcement of settlers, the claims of the English to the stipulated dependence was defied; and the payment of tribute successfully resisted. For the better security of their resumed independence, the Dutch colonists now erected a second fort on the south-west point of Long Island, and afterwards built two others, the one at Good Hope (now Hartford), on Connecticut river, the other at Nassau, on the east side of Delaware Bay. They continued for a series of years, in unmolested tranquillity, to mature their settlement, increase their numbers, and by the exertion of their peculiar national virtues of patience and industry, to subdue the difficulties incident to an infant colony.

In 1620, the States of Holland established the West India Company, and in pursuance of their favourite policy of colonizing by means of exclusive companies, they determined to commit to it the administration of New Netherlands. This determination was carried into effect the following year; and, under the management of the company, the new settlement was soon both consolidated and extended. Their capital city was built on Manhattan Island, and received the name of New Amsterdam. The precise extent of territory as claimed by the Dutch, has been differently represented by their own writers-some of whom explicitly declared that it extended from Virginia to Connecticut. Whatever might have been its titular extent, the planters hastened to enlarge their occupation far beyond their immediate use; and by their intrusions into the Delaware and Connecticut territories, laid the foundation of their future disputes with the colonists of these parts. Their first settlement had been made without any equitable remuneration to the Indian proprietors of the land; but when

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ADMINISTRATION OF KIEFT.

they extended their appropriations to Connecticut and Delaware, they were careful to facilitate their admission by purchasing the territory from its savage owners. The Dutch company had watched with attention the proceedings of the English Puritan exiles at Leyden, and viewed with alarm their projected migration to the banks of the Hudson. To defeat this design, they bribed the Dutch captain with whom the Puritans sailed, to carry them farther north, so that their plantation was eventually formed in the territory of Massachusetts. This colony, having now attained some strength (1627), the government at New Amsterdam sought to cultivate a friendly correspondence with them; and for this purpose despatched their secretary, Rosier, with a congratulatory communication to the governor of Plymouth. The English, from whose memory the fraud which deprived them of a settlement on Hudson river had not banished the recollection of Dutch hospitality at Leyden, received with much courtesy the congratulations of their successful rivals, on the courageous struggle they had maintained with the difficulties of their situation.

During the administration of Wouter Van Twiller, the first governor appointed by the West India Company, the Dutch colonists appear to have enjoyed a state of calm and monotonous ease, which served but indifferently to prepare them for their impending contentions with the hardy settlers of New England. Van Twiller was succeeded, in 1637, by William Kieft, a man of enterprise and ability, but choleric and imperious in temper, and better fitted to encounter with spirit, than to stem with prudence, the sea of trouble that began on all sides to invade the possessions of the Dutch. Their history for many subsequent years, is little else than a chronicle of their struggles and contentions with the English, the Swedes, and the Indians. Kieft's administration commenced with a protest against the advancing settlements of Connecticut and New Haven, with a prohibition of the trade which the English were carrying on in the neighbourhood of Good Hope, His reputation for ability, and the sharpness of his remonstrance,

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