about four miles from Stamford, and to run in a northerly direction twenty miles into the country, provided that the said line came not within ten miles of the Hudson river.  The Dutch were not to build any house within six miles of said line.  The inhabitants of Greenwich were to remain, till further consideration, under the Government of the Dutch.  It was also decided that a nearer union of friendship and amity, between England and the Dutch colonies in America, should be recommended to the several jurisdictions of the United Colonies.

Stuyvesant reported the result of these negotiations to the Chamber at Amsterdam but, for some unexplained reason, did not send to that body a copy of the treaty.  Upon his return to Manhattan he was immediately met with a storm of discontent.  His choice of two Englishmen as the referees, to represent the Dutch cause, gave great offence.  It was deemed an insult to his own countrymen.  There was a general disposition with the colonists to repudiate a treaty which the Dutch had had no hand in forming.  Complaints were sent to Holland that the Governor had surrendered more territory than might have formed fifty colonies; and that, rejecting those reforms in favor of popular rights which the home government had ordered, he was controlling all things with despotic power.

“This grievous and unsuitable government,” the Nine Men wrote,

“ought at once to be reformed.  The measures ordered by the home government should be enforced so that we may live as happily as our neighbors.  Our term of office is about to expire.  The governor has declared that he will not appoint any other select men.  We shall not dare again to assemble in a body; for we dread unjustifiable prosecutions, and we can already discern the smart thereof from afar."[8]

Notwithstanding these reiterated rebukes, Stuyvesant persisted in his arbitrary course.  The vice-director, Van Diricklagen, and the fiscal or treasurer Van Dyck, united in a new protest expressing the popular griefs.  Van Der Donck was the faithful representative of the commonalty in their fatherland.  The vice-director, in forwarding the new protest to him wrote,

“Our great Muscovy duke keeps on as of old; something like the wolf, the longer he lives the worse he bites.”

It is a little remarkable that the English refugees, who were quite numerous in the colony, were in sympathy with the arbitrary assumptions of the governor.  They greatly strengthened his hands by sending a Memorial to the West India Company, condemning the elective franchise which the Dutch colonists desired.

“We willingly acknowledge,” they wrote,

“that the power to elect a governor from among ourselves, which is, we know, the design of some here, would be our ruin, by reason of our factions and the difference of opinion which prevails among us.”

The West India Company, not willing to relinquish the powers which it grasped, was also in very decided opposition to the spirit of popular freedom which the Dutch colonists were urging, and which was adopted by the States-General.  Thus, in this great controversy, the governor, the West India Company and the English settlers in the colony were on one side.  Upon the other side stood the States-General and the Dutch colonists almost without exception.