In the Council of State their deputy was the President, and in the States-General his was the first vote^ cast. "The Dutch Nobility" says the English author of the "Description of Holland" in 1743, seem to observe a medium between the loftiness of those of the same rank in some countries, and the meanness of others. The Italian Nobility do not scruple to trade: The French are nicer: yet they make no difficulty to marry a tradesman's daughter, if she be rich, and thereby capable of repairing a shattered Estate. The British Nobility do not differ from the French in this respect. The Germans abhor trade; and perhaps in effect of the general barbarous constitution of their country, Tyrant and Slave, disdain to mingle their blood with that of base plebeians, though their brethren of nature."'

It was this combined and harmonious system of mingled municipalism and aristocracy, which gave ; the United Netherlands their great power and made them such a strong, conservative, and successful j nation. It was a system they had tried, and under which they had lived, for more than two centuries, which all classes approved, and with which they were fully satisfied and thoroughly familiar. Hence it was, that when tlie West India Company undertook to colonize New Netherland, they Aturally adopted for that new po.ssession the same system which they knew had always worked well in the old, which they had always been accustomed to, and which was in entire consonance with the views, habits, manners, • and customs, of the people of the Bataviau re- I public.