and more advance over and above first cost, assurance, duty, laborers' wages, freight &c., all which are added to the first cost. 'Tis evident these people accuse the Board of Directors audits officers of the very fault they themselves commit, and never will they prove that the Company

had sold goods, during the time, it kept its store and magazines stocked there, at an advance of more than fifty per cent, agreeably to the Exemptions. The Director there cannot prevent

HOLLAND DOCUMENTS: V. 423

this one and that forestalling and seeking his own profit, particularly as the trade is thrown open to the little as well as to the big. 'Tis a pure calumny that the Company ordered half a fault to be accounted a whole one.^ What instruction or order the Patroon gives his Director is noaffair of the Colonist forsooth :

'tis for the purpose of inventing prosecutions. These people then would fain live subject to no person's censure or discipline, which, however, they doubly require. The instance wherein the Director exercised and usurped Sovereign power, must be specified and proved. It, too, is in general terms. That the Colonists had need of the Directors is evident from the account books which will show that the Company supplied all freemen, some few excepted, with clothing, provisions and other articles for the construction of houses, at an advance of 50 per cent, on the just cost in Fatherland; which supplies have not yet been paid for; and people by their complaints would fain filch the country from the Company, and pay nothing. 'Tis ridiculous to accuse Director Kieft of saying that he was Sovereign like the Prince in Fatherland. But in regard to the refusal of appeal to Fatherland, it arose from the circumstance that the Island of the Manhatans was reserved, in the Exemptions, as the Capital of New Netherland, and that allthe Colonies round about should bring their appeal to it, as the Supreme Court of that quarter. 'Tis to be, moreover, borne in mind that the Patroon of the Colonie Renselaerwyck causes all his tenants to sign, that they will not appeal to the Manhatans, in direct contravention of the Exemptions, by which the Colonists are bound to render to the Director and Council at the Manhatans an annual Report both of the Colony and of the Administration of Justice.