HOLLAND DOCUMENTS: V. 425 that the Commonalty have to pay so much, but that of the traders, who charge 1. 2 and 3 hundred advance ; and the people must submit, because there are few merchants. It can, neither now nor hereafter, be shown that 30,000 guilders a year have been collected from the Commonalty in Stuy vesant's time ; for nothing was received but the beer and wine excise, which, at the Manhatans, yields about 4000 guilders a year ; little or nothing is received from the other neighboring towns, because they have no taverns, except one at the Ferry and one at Flushing. If any confiscations have taken place, they have not been of property belonging to colonists, but of imported contraband goods, and no person's property has been confiscated without sufficient cause. The question is, are the Company or the Directors obliged to have constructed any buildings for the people out of the duties paid by the trader in New Netherland on exported goods, particularly as their High Mightinesses granted those duties to the Company to facilitate garrisons, and the payment of the expenses attendant thereupon, and not for building Hospitals and Orphan asylums, Churches and School-houses for the people. It cannot be substantiated that the Company's property has been squandered for the purpose

of securing friends. The provisions received in exchange for the Tamandare Negroes, were sent to Curagao, except a portion consumed at the Manhatans, as the accounts will show. But all these are matters which do not concern these people, especially as they are not responsible for them. In regard to the letters of manumission which the Director was so good as to grant to the Negroes who had been the Company's slaves : They were set free in return for their long service, on condition that the children remain slaves ; these are treated the same as Christians; at present there are no more than three of these children in service ; one at the House of the Hope one at the Company's bouwerie, and one with Martin Crigier, who, as everybody ;