A duty of eight per cent on exported beavers, which falls, not on the colonist, but on the merchant, who is bound to pay it, according to contract. The Director always manifested a desire, and was pleased to see a delegation, from the Commonalty, which should seek in Fatherland from the Company, as Patroons, and the Lords States, as Sovereigns, the following, viz': Population ; settlement of boundaries ; reduction of the duties on New Netherland tobacco, &c. ; facilities for emigration ; permanent and solid privileges, &c. He always offered to assist in the promotion of these objects, but the Remonstrants had recourse to underhand ways they excited some of the Commonalty, from whom they obtained ;

clandestine and secret certificates, and aimed at nothing less, as their Remonstrance proves, than to render the Company, their Patroons, and the officers in New Netherland, (except such as are devoted to them, ) odious before their High Mightinesses, so as by that means to deprive the Company of the Jus Paironatus, and inflict on it further injury. The Remonstrants assert that we had courted the English in order through them to distract the Board, as they call it. This statement is untrue, as appears by the propositions submitted to them. 'Tis worthy of remark here, however, that the English residing under the protection of the Dutch, have taken an oath of fidelity, and are domiciliated and settled in New Netherland ; they are therefore to be accounted fellow citizens of the country, which these persons have always opposed, because the English would, as well as they, have had some voice in the delegation, and would not subscribe to all the calumnies and slanders, but aimed solely at thegood of the country and of its inhabitants. No postil was ever affixed to the petition, authorizingthem to go and speak privately to the Commonalty.