Mightiuesses iH the ,, _ i name and on behalf of the \ -it. t- \ •

entire Commonalty oi New /~i ^ n t^j

HOLLAND DOCUMENTS : II. 141 Netherland, containing divers complaints respecting tlie inconveniences to which they are there exposed. Whereupon, deliberation being had, it is resolved and concluded, that copy of the aforesaid Remonstrance be sent to the Assembly of the XIX. of the West India Company, so that prompt order may be taken on said Complaints, and for the removal of the aforesaid inconveniences.

[ Here follo-ws a fragment of the letter of the States General to the Assembly of the XIX., transmitting the foregoing RcsoIutioD, bnt it is, for the most part, unintelligible. -- Eb.]

Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company to the States General.

I From the Original in tho Royal Archives at the Hague. File, West Indie. ]

High and Mighty Lords. Your High Mightinesses' letter dated the 5"" April, is duly come to hand. Though addressed to the Assembly of the XIX., we have opened it here at our private meeting, and read it with particularly grateful acceptance, in regard of your High Mightinesses' paternal and gracious care for the wretched Commonalty of New Netherland; we have also attentively examined the petition of the said Commonalty presented to your High Mightinesses. We have resolved, to write to your High Mightinesses in answer to tiie one and the other, that jointly and individually, we sensibly feel in the inmost recesses of our hearts^the miserable and desolate condition of the poor people there, the rather as we find ourselves in such inability that we not only cannot supply the requisite means to bring this Colony, which is a source of so much expense for the West India Company, to such a state that we might in time realize the long looked for fruits thereof; but cannot, at present, even furnish those poor people who have left their Fatherland, in the hope of obtaining, with their wives and children in that country, an honest livelihood, with such supplies as are most urgently required for their support and protection against the barbarous inhabitants of those parts.