The continued encroachment and pressure of the English of Connecticut, and of the east end of Long Island -- then practically a part of Connecticut -- upon the Dutch in New Netherland, led the Burgomasters and Schepens of New Amsterdam and the delegates from the adjoining towns, in public meeting, on the 2d of November, 1G63, to send a Remonstrance to the Directors of the West India Company asking for assistance and protection. In this document they make this striking statement of their position, and the condition of the Province, at that time, and the consequences that would follow unless relief was afforded, consequences which really happened in less than a year afterward.

" When it is considered that the Remonstrants, on the one side, stand here between barbarous nations, and are bounded on the other by a powerful neighbour who keeps quarreling with this State about the limits. Thus the good people are thereby brought and reduced to a condition like unto that of a flock without a shepherd, a prey to whomsoever will seize

his advantage to attack it. And lastly (and what is of the most considerable force), is evident by the aggressions attempted on the part of the English Nation, our neighbours, on divers places into the jurisdiction of this Province ; whereof your Honors will, no doubt, have been advised by the Director-General and Council. Which English Nation hath, as your Remonstrants learn, found out a way neglected by your Honors, to provide and arm itself with a coat of mail in the shape of an unlimited patent and commission which it lately obtained from his Majesty of England.' "So that this commission and patent being executed by them according to their interpretation ; for experience in State affairs teaches and abundantly exemplifies, that the strongest are commonly in the right, and that the feeble, ordinarily, must succumb; the total loss of this Province is infallibly to be expected and anticipated, such apprehension being indubitably very strong; or, at least, it will be so cramped and clipped, that it will resemble only a useless trunk, shorn of limbs and form, divested of all its internal parts, the head separated from the feet; and therefore the Remonstrants would be, if not at once, wholly oppressed, and reduced to such a state of anxiety, as to be desperately necessitated, to their irreparable ruin, to abandon and quit this Province, and thus become outcasts with their families.