Considerations of the Board of Audit of the West India Company regarding the reform of said Company, drawn up pursuant to the order of the High and Mighty Lords States General of the United Netherlands and delivered to their High Mightinesses' Commissioners at the Hague, the 27 May, 1647.

chkmbetofAocounto ^he decHue of the Company's affairs and the difficulty in which they are at Eedresa. present placed, arise on the one hand from divers disorders in this country and bad management in the foreign conquests (which have for a longtime past impaired the Company), and on the other, from some unfortunate occurrences in Brazil, Angola and elsewhere, which have completely prostrated and ruined it. Two-fold means of redress must consequently be

236 NEW- YORK COLONIAL MANUSCRIPTS. discovered and applied. First : to reestablish the Company in its lost or disturbed possessions.

Secondly : to enact such firm and good orders that the Company will not only be maintained in its ordinary course, and continue to subsist, but may in time be brought to a flourishing state. In regard to the recovery of the conquest of Brazil, we see no other means of accomplishing that, than what has lately been submitted by the committee of the Directors of the respective Ciiambers to your High Mightinesses at the Hague, to wit that in addition to the aid :

already dispatched, (which was not found sufficient against such a united body of Portuguese rebels,) a competent and combined military force be voted anew by the State, and conveyed to Brazil with ships, ammunition and other necessaries, not only to recover and clear our frontiers, but also to prosecute further designs either against Bahia, as the chief seat of the war and of the piratical practices of the Portuguese, or elsewhere. Tiie Company, once relieved by these means, of its treacherous neighbors, could disembarrass itself of the onerous charge of the military, and of the support of several fortresses; the freemen would be induced to establish themselves peaceably in said conquests, without fearing to be again stripped of their plantations (ingenhos) and goods, and by the increase of population and agriculture, the Company would be at once set on its legs.